Horror Comics & Graphic Novels

HORRORSTORY

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THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES

INTRODUCTION

13 Is a Lucky Number

So. you survived 1984, did you? Now then, let’s see if you can survive
The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIII —presenting eighteen of the best
horror stories published during 1984.

The real horror of 1984, at least for me, was in trying to limit my
choices for this year’s annual of the best horror fiction. Perhaps George
Orwell meant to warn us that 1984 would be an outstanding year for
horror fiction. Series XIII could easily have been twice the size of the
present volume, and I had a few sleepless nights trying to decide which
stories I would have to exclude because of space restrictions. Perhaps
next year someone will write a horror story about that.

In any event. The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XIII represents the
best of the best from a Very Good Year. As usual, the stories were written
by a mixture of Famous Names and of new and/or unfamiliar authors.
Looking over the final line-up, I note that half of the writers have
appeared in The Year’s Best Horror Stories at least once before, while for
the other haplf this is their first appearance. Sources of these stories range
from genre magazines and anthologies to small press publications and
chapbooks to literary magazines and women’s/men’s magazines. One
story is from a convention program booklet, and another is from a comic
book. The stories themselves run from quiet horror to the grisly. You’ll
find contemporary horror as well as traditional supernatural stories.
There’s science fiction alongside black humor and dark fantasy. These
stories selected without regard to taboos. Big Names, or any particular
subgenre of horror. I sifted through a year’s output of short fiction to find
stories that hold the power to chill the imagination—whether through
icy terror or with a disquieting shiver. Here are the eighteen stories from
1984 that best succeeded in evoking a mood of horror.

Thirteen volumes is about the record for any best-of-the-year anthol¬
ogy series. Judith Merrill’s outstanding best-of-the-year science fic-

3

4 13 Isa Lucky Humber

tion/fantasy series lasted thirteen volumes (under various titles) from
the 1950s up until the close of the 1960s. Donald Wollheim’s year’s-best
science fiction series is the only other such series to last as long. This is
the thirteenth volume of The Year’s Best Horror Stories, begun by Sphere
Books in England with Richard Davis as editor, reprinted by DAW Books
in the United States and continued by DAW with Gerald W. Page as
editor, and (when Page elected to devote more time to his own writing
career) edited by me for the last half-dozen volumes. If you have all
thirteen volumes of this series, then you have a good cross-section of the
best in horror short fiction over the past decade-and-a-half. You will also
have seen how young, unknown writers such as Stephen King, Ramsey
Campbell, Dennis Etchison, or Charles L. Grant have developed into
major forces in modem horror literature.

Stick with us. In another thirteen years some of the young, unknown
writers whose work you’re reading here will have become giants in the
field.

The scariest is yet to come.

■Karl Edward Wagner

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut

Stephen King

Stephen King is generally considered to he the author who put horror
fiction on the map. Certainly he is the author who put horror novels at
the top of the bestseller charts, and subsequently made publishers think
of horror fiction as something with a greater audience than a lunatic
fringe of costumed sci-fi buffs. Beginning with Carrie, King has had a
string of bestselling novels —’Salem’s Lot, The Shining, The Stand, The
Dead Zone, Firestarter, Cujo, Christine, Pet Sematary —many of which
have been made into major films. King also excels as a writer of short
fiction, as can be seen in his short story collections, Night Shift, Different
Seasons, and the recent Skeleton Crew. Other recent books include The
Talisman (with Peter Straub), Cycle of the Werewolf, The Eyes of the
Dragon, and Thinner (writing as Richard Bachman ).

Bom September21,1947 in Portland, Maine, King has made frequent
use of Down East backgrounds in his fiction. He and his wife, Tabitha
(who also writes horror fiction), live with their children in a large
Victorian house in Bangor. “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut”grew out ofTabitha’s
obsession with finding new shortcuts — and, yes, she does drive a Merce¬
des. For those who assume anything written by Stephen King is automat¬
ically published, three women’s magazines rejected this story before
Redbook accepted it. “Mrs. Todd’s Shortcut” is one of King’s finest pieces
of writing, and is a further proof that King stands to become an important
regionalist as well as horror writer.

“There goes the Todd woman,” I said.

Homer Buckland watched the little Jaguar go by and nodded. The
woman raised her hand to Homer. Homer nodded his big, shaggy head
to her but didn’t raise his own hand in return. The Todd family had a big
summer home on Castle Lake, and Homer had been their caretaker since
time out of mind. I had an idea that he disliked Worth Todd’s second
wife every bit as much as he’d liked ’Phelia Todd, the first one.

This was just about two years ago and we were sitting on a bench in

5

6 Stephen King

front of Bell’s Market, me with an orange soda-pop, Homer with a glass
of mineral water. It was October, which is a peaceful time in Castle Rock.
Lots of the lake places still get used on the weekends, but the aggressive,
boozy summer socializing is over by then and the hunters with their big
guns and their expensive nonresident permits pinned to their orange caps
haven’t started to come into town yet. Crops have been mostly laid by.
Nights are cool, good for sleeping, and old joints like mine haven’t yet
started to complain. In October the sky over the lake is passing fair, with
those big white clouds that move so slow; I like how they seem so flat
on the bottoms, and how they are a little gray there, like with a shadow
of sundown foretold, and I can watch the sun sparkle on the water and
not be bored for some space of minutes. It’s in October, sitting on the
bench in front of Bell’s and watching the lake from afar off, that I still
wish I was a smoking man.

“She don’t drive as fast as ’Phelia,” Homer said. “I swan I used to think
what an old-fashion name she had for a woman that could put a car
through its paces like she could.”

Summer people like the Todds are nowhere near as interesting to the
year-round residents of small Maine towns as they themselves believe.
Year-round folk prefer their own love stories and hate stories and
scandals and rumors of scandal. When that textile fellow from Amesbury
shot himself, Estonia Corbridge found that after a week or so she couldn’t
even get invited to lunch on her story of how she found him with the
pistol still in one stiffening hand. But folks are still not done talking about
Joe Camber, who got killed by his own dog.

Well, it don’t matter. It’s just that they are different race-courses we
run on. Summer people are trotters; us others that don’t put on ties to
do our week’s work are just pacers. Even so there was quite a lot of local
interest when Ophelia Todd disappeared back in 1973. Ophelia was a
genuinely nice woman, and she had done a lot of things in town. She
worked to raise money for the Sloan Library, helped to refurbish the war
memorial, and that sort of thing. But all the summer people like the idea
of raising money. You mention raising money and their eyes light up and
commence to gleam. You mention raising money and they can get a
committee together and appoint a secretary and keep an agenda. They
like that. But you mention time (beyond, that is, one big long walloper
of a combined cocktail party and committee meeting) and you’re out of
luck. Time seems to be what summer people mostly set a store by. They
lay it by, and if they could put it up in Ball jars like preserves, why, they
would. But ’Phelia Todd seemed willing to spend time—to do desk duty
in the library as well as to raise money for it. When it got down to using

0

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 7

scouring pads and elbow-grease on the war memorial, ’Phelia was right
out there with town women who had lost sons in three different wars,
wearing an overall with her hair done up in a kerchief. And when kids
needed ferrying to a summer swim program, you’d be as apt to see her
as anyone headed down Landing Road with the back of Worth Todd’s
big shiny pickup full of kids. A good woman. Not a town woman, but a
good woman. And when she disappeared, there was concern. Not
grieving, exactly, because a disappearance is not exactly like a death. It’s
not like chopping something off with a cleaver; more like something
running down the sink so slow you don’t know it’s all gone until long
after it is.

“ ’Twas a Mercedes she drove,” Homer said, answering the question I
hadn’t asked. “Two-seater sportster. Todd got it for her in sixty-four or
sixty-five, I guess. You remember her taking the kids to the lake all those
years they had Frogs and Tadpoles?”

“Ayuh.”

“She’d drive em no more than forty, mindful they was in the back. But
it chafed her. That woman had lead in her foot and a ball bearing
sommers in the back of her ankle.”

It used to be that Homer never talked about his summer people. But
then his wife died. Five years ago it was. She was plowing a grade and
the tractor tipped over on her and Homer was taken bad off about it. He
grieved for two years or so and then seemed to feel better. But he was
not the same. He seemed waiting for something to happen, waiting for
the next thing. You’d pass his neat little house sometimes at dusk and he
would be on the porch smoking a pipe with a glass of mineral water on
the porch rail and the sunset would be in his eyes and pipe smoke around
his head and you’d think—I did, anyway —Homer is waiting for the next
thing. This bothered me over a wider range of my mind than I liked to
admit, and at last I decided it was because if it had been me, I wouldn’t
have been waiting for the next thing, like a groom who has put on his
morning coat and finally has his tie right and is only sitting there on a
bed in the upstairs of his house and looking first at himself in the mirror
and then at the clock on the mantel and waiting for it to be eleven o’clock
so he can get married. If it had been me, I would not have been waiting
for the next thing; I would have been waiting for the last thing.

But in that waiting period—which ended when Homer went to Ver¬
mont a year later—he sometimes talked about those people. To me, to
a few others.

“She never even drove fast with her husband, s’far as I know. But when
I drove with her, she made that Mercedes strut.”

8 Stephen King

A fellow pulled in at the pumps and began to fill up his car. The car
had a Massachusetts plate.

“It wasn’t one of these new sports cars that run on onleaded gasoline
and hitch every time you step on it; it was one of the old ones, and the
speedometer was calibrated all the way up to a hundred and sixty. It was
a funny color of brown and I ast her one time what you called that color
and she said it was champagne. Ain’t thatgood, I says, and she laughs fit
to split. I like a woman who will laugh when you don’t have to point her
right at the joke, you know.”

The man at the pumps had finished getting his gas.

“Afternoon, gentlemen,” he says as he comes up the steps.

“A good day to you,” I says, and he went inside.

“ ’Phelia was always looking for a shortcut,” Homer went on as if we
had never been interrupted. “That woman was mad for a shortcut. I never
saw the beat of it. She said if you can save enough distance, you’ll save
time as well. She said her father swore by that scripture. He was a
salesman, always on the road, and she went with him when she could,
and he was always lookin for the shortest way. So she got in the habit.

“I ast her one time if it wasn’t kinda funny—here she was on the one
hand, spendin her time rubbin up that old statue in the Square and takin
the little ones to their swimmin lessons instead of playing tennis and
swimming and getting boozed up like normal summer people, and on
the other hand bein so damn set on savin fifteen minutes between here
and Fryeburg that thinkin about it probably kep her up nights. It just
seemed to me the two things went against each other’s grain, if you see
what I mean. She just looks at me and says, ‘I like being helpful, Homer.
I like driving, too—at least sometimes, when it’s a challenge—but I don’t
like the time it takes. It’s mending clothes—sometimes you take tucks
and sometimes you let things out. Do you see what I mean?’ ”

“ ‘I guess so, missus,’ I says, kinda dubious.

“ ‘If sitting behind the wheel of a car was my idea of a really good time
all the time, I would look for long-cuts,’ she says, and that tickled me
s’much I had to laugh.”

The Massachusetts fellow came out of the store with a six-pack in one
hand and some lottery tickets in the other.

“You enjoy your weekend,” Homer says.

“I always do,” the Massachusetts fellow says. “I only wish I could afford
to live here all year round.”

“Well, we’ll keep it all in good order for when you can come,” Homer
says, and the fellow laughs.

We watched him drive off toward someplace, that Massachusetts plate

0

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 9

showing. It was a green one. My Marcy says those are the ones the
Massachusetts Motor Registry gives to drivers who ain’t had a accident
in that strange, angry, fuming state for two years. If you have, she says,
you got to have a red one so people know to watch out for you when
they see you on the roll.

“They was in-state people, you know, the both of them,” Homer said,
as if the Massachusetts fellow had reminded him of the fact.

“I guess I did know that,” I said.

“The Todds are just about the only birds we got that fly north in the
winter. The new one, I don’t think she likes flying north too much.”

He sipped his mineral water and fell silent a moment, thinking.

“She didn’t mind it, though,” Homer said. “At least, l judge she didn’t
although she used to complain about it something fierce. The complain¬
ing was just a way to explain why she was always lookin for a shortcut.”

“And you mean her husband didn’t mind her traipsing down every
wood-road in tarnation between here and Bangor just so she could see
if it was nine-tenths of a mile shorter?”

“He didn’t care piss-all,” Homer said shortly, and got up, and went in
the store. There now, Owens, I told myself, you know it ain’t safe to ast
him questions when he’s yarning, and you went right ahead and ast one,
and you have buggered a story that was starting to shape up promising.

I sat there and turned my face up into the sun and after about ten
minutes he came out with a boiled egg and sat down. He ate her and I
took care not to say nothing and the water on Castle Lake sparkled as
blue as something as might be told of in a story about treasure. When
Homer had finished his egg and had a sip of mineral water, he went on.
I was surprised, but still said nothing. It wouldn’t have been wise.

“They had two or three different chunks of rolling iron,” he said.
“There was the Cadillac, and his truck, and her little Mercedes go-devil.
A couple of winters he left the truck, ’case they wanted to come down
and do some skiin. Mostly when the summer was over he’d drive the
Caddy back up and she’d take her go-devil.”

I nodded but didn’t speak. In truth, I was afraid to risk another
comment. Later I thought it would have taken a lot of comments to shut
Homer Buckland up that day. He had been wanting to tell the story of
Mrs. Todd’s shortcut for a long time.

“Her little go-devil had a special odometer in it that told you how many
miles was in a trip, and every time she set off from Castle Lake to Bangor
she’d set it 000-point-0 and let her clock up to whatever. She had made
a game of it, and she used to chafe me with it.”

He paused, thinking that back over.

10 Stephen King

“No, that ain’t right.”

He paused more and faint lines showed up on his forehead like steps
on a library ladder.

“She made like she made a game of it, but it was a serious business to
her. Serious as anything else, anyway.” He flapped a hand and I think he
meant the husband. “The glovebox of the little go-devil was filled with
maps, and there was a few more in the back where there would be a seat
in a regular car. Some was gas station maps, and some was pages that
had been pulled from the Rand-McNally Road Atlas; she had some maps
from Appalachian Trail guidebooks and a whole mess of topographical
survey-squares, too. It wasn’t her having those maps that made me think
it wa’n’t a game; it was how she’d drawed lines on all of them, showing
routes she’d taken or at least tried to take.

“She’d been stuck a few times, too, and had to get a pull from some
farmer with a tractor and chain.

“I was there one day laying tile in the bathroom, sitting there with
grout squittering out of every damn crack you could see—I dreamed of
nothing but squares and cracks that was bleeding grout that night—and
she come stood in the doorway and talked to me about it for quite a
while. I used to chafe her about it, but I was also sort of interested, and
not just because my brother Franklin used to live down-Bangor and I’d
traveled most of the roads she was telling me of. I was interested just
because a man like me is always oncommon interested in knowing the
shortest way, even if he don’t always want to take it. You that way too?”

“Ayuh,” I said. There’s something powerful about knowing the shortest
way, even if you take the longer way because you know your mother-in-
law is sitting home. Getting there quick is often for the birds, although
no one holding a Massachusetts driver’s license seems to know it. But
knowing how to get there quick—or even knowing how to get there a
way that the person sitting beside you don’t know... that has power.

“Well, she had them roads like a Boy Scout has his knots,” Homer said,
and smiled his large, sunny grin. “She says, ‘Wait a minute, wait a
minute,’ like a little girl, and I hear her through the wall rummaging
through her desk, and then she comes back with a little notebook that
looked like she’d had it a good long time. Cover was all rumpled, don’t
you know, and some of the pages had pulled loose from those little wire
rings on one side.

“ ‘The way Worth goes—the way most people go—is Route 97 to
Mechanic Falls, then Route 11 to Lewiston, and then the Interstate to
Bangor. 156.4 miles.’”

I nodded.

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 11

“ ‘If you want to skip the turnpike—and save some distance—you’d
go to Mechanic Falls, Route 11 to Lewiston, Route 202 to Augusta, then
up Route 9 through China Lake and Unity and Haven to Bangor. That’s
144.9 miles.’

“ ‘You won’t save no time that way, missus,’ I says, ‘not going through
Lewiston and Augusta. Although I will admit that drive up the Old Derry
Road to Bangor is real pretty.’

“ ‘Save enough miles and soon enough you’ll save time,’ she says. ‘And
I didn’t say that’s the way I’d go, although I have a good many times; I’m
just running down the routes most people use. Do you want me to go
on?’

“ ‘No,’ I says, just leave me in this cussed bathroom all by myself starin
at all these cussed cracks until I start to rave.’

“ ‘There are four major routes in all,’ she says. ‘The one by Route 2 is
163.4 miles. I only tried it once. Too long.’

“ ‘That’s the one I’d hosey if my wife called and told me it was
leftovers,’ I says, kinda low.

“ ‘What was that?’ she says.

“ ‘Nothin,’ I says, ‘Talkin to the grout.’

“ ‘Oh. Well, the fourth—and there aren’t too many who know about
it, although they are all good roads—paved, anyway, is across Speckled
Bird Mountain on 219 to 202 beyond Lewiston. Then, if you take Route
19, you can get around Augusta. Then you take the Old Derry Road. That
way is just 129.2.’

“I didn’t say nothing for a little while and p’raps she thought I was
doubting her because she says, a little pert, ‘I know it’s hard to believe,
but it’s so.’

“I said I guessed that was about right, and I thought—looking back—it
probably was. Because that’s the way I’d usually go when I went down
to Bangor to see Franklin when he was still alive. I hadn’t been that way
in years, though. Do you think a man could just—well—forget a road,
Dave?”

I allowed it was possible. The turnpike is easy to think of. After a while
it almost fills a man’s mind, and you think not how could I get from here
to there but how can I get from here to the turnpike ramp that’s closest
to there. And that made me think that maybe there are lots of roads all
over that are just going begging; roads with rock walls beside them, real
roads with blackberry bushes growing alongside them but nobody to eat
the berries but the birds and gravel pits with old rusted chains hanging
down in low curve in front of their entryways, the pits themselves as
forgotten as a child’s old toys with scrumgrass growing up their deserted

12 Stephen King

unremembered sides. Roads that have just been forgot except by the
people who live on them and think of the quickest way to get off them
and onto the turnpike where you can pass on a hill and not fret over it.
We like to joke in Maine that you can’t get there from here, but maybe
the joke is on us. The truth is there’s about a damn thousand ways to do
it and man doesn’t bother.

Homer continued: “I grouted tile all afternoon in that hot little
bathroom and she stood there in the doorway all that time, one foot
crossed behind the other, bare-legged, wearin loafers and a khaki-col¬
ored skirt and a sweater that was some darker. Hair was drawed back in
a hosstail. She must have been thirty-four or -five then, but her face was
lit up with what she was tellin me and I swan she looked like a sorority
girl home from school on vacation.

“After a while she musta got an idea of how long she’d been there
cuttin the air around her mouth because she says, ‘I must be boring the
hell out of you, Homer.’

“ ‘Yes’m,’ I says, ‘you are. I druther you went away and left me to talk
to this damn grout.’

“ ‘Don’t be sma’at, Homer,’ she says.

“ ‘No, missus, you ain’t borin me,’ I says.

“So she smiles and then goes back to it, pagin through her little
notebook like a salesman checkin his orders. She had those four main
ways—well, really three because she gave up on Route 2 right away—but
she must have had forty different other ways that were play-offs on those.
Roads with state numbers, roads without, roads with names, roads
without. My head fair spun with em. And finally she says to me, ‘You
ready for the blue ribbon winner, Homer?’

“ ‘I guess so,’ I says.

“ ‘At least it’s the blue ribbon winner so far,’ she says. ‘Do you know,
Homer, that a man wrote an article in Science Today in 1921 proving that
no man could run a mile in under four minutes? He proved it, with all
sorts of calculations based on the maximum length of the male thigh-
muscles, maximum length of stride, maximum lung capacity, maximum
heart-rate, and a whole lot more. I was taken with that article! I was so
taken that I gave it to Worth and asked him to give it to Professor Murray
in the math department at the University of Maine. I wanted those figures
checked because I was sure they must have been based on the wrong
postulates, or something. Worth probably thought I was being silly—
“Ophelia’s got a bee in her bonnet” is what he says—but he took them.
Well, Professor Murray checked through the man’s figures quite carefully
and do you know what, Homer?’

• • •

0

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 13

“ ‘No, missus.’

“ Those figures were right. The man’s criteria were solid. He proved,
back in 1923, that a man couldn’t run a mile in under four minutes. He
proved that. But people do it all the time, and do you know that that
means?’

“ ‘No, missus,’ I said, although I had a glimmer.

“ ‘It means that no blue ribbon is forever,’ she says. ‘Someday—if the
world doesn’t explode itself in the meantime—someone will run a
two-minute mile in the Olympics. It may take a hundred years or a
thousand, but it will happen. Because there is no ultimate blue ribbon.
There is zero, and there is eternity, and there is mortality, but there is
no ultimate.'

“And there she stood, her face clean and scrubbed and shinin, that
darkish hair of hers pulled back from her brow, as if to say ‘Just you go
ahead and disagree if you can.’ But I couldn’t. Because I believe some¬
thing like that. It is much like what the minister means, I think, when he
talks about grace. *

“ ‘You ready for the blue-ribbon winner for now?' she says.

“ ‘Ayuh,’ I says, and I even stopped groutin for the time bein. I’d
reached the tub anyway and there wasn’t nothing left but a lot of those
frikkin squirrelly little comers. She drawed a deep breath and then
spieled it out at me as fast as that auctioneer goes over in Gates Falls
when he has been putting the whiskey to himself, and I can’t remember
it all, but it went something like this.”

Homer Buckland shut his eyes for a moment, his big hands lying
perfectly still on his long thighs, his face turned up toward the sun. Then
he opened his eyes again and for a moment I swan he looked like her,
yes he did, a seventy-year-old man looking like a woman of thirty-four
who was at that moment in her time looking like a college girl of twenty,
and I can’t remember exactly what he said any more than he could
remember exactly what she said, not just because it was complex but
because I was so fetched by how he looked sayin it, but it went close
enough like this:

“ ‘You set out Route 97 and then cut up Denton Street to the Old
Townhouse Road and that way you get around Castle Rock downtown
but back to 97. Nine miles up you can go an old logger’s road a mile and
a half to Town Road #6, which takes you to Big Anderson Road by Sites’
Cedar Mill. There’s a cut-road the old-timers call Bear Road, and that
gets you to 219. Once you’re on the far side of Speckled Bird Mountain
you grab the Stanhouse Road, turn left onto the Bull Pine Road—there’s
a swampy patch there but you can spang right through it if you get up

14 Stephen King

enough speed on the gravel—and so you come out on Route 106. 106
cuts through Alton’s Plantation to the Old Derry Road—and there’s two
or three woods roads there that you follow and so come out on Route 3
just beyond Derry Hospital. From there it’s only four miles to Route 2 in
Etna, and so into Bangor.’

“She paused to get her breath back, then looked at me. ‘Do you know
how long that is, all told?’

“ ‘No’m’ I says, thinking it sounds like about a hundred and ninety
miles and four bust springs.

“ ‘It’s 116.4 miles,’ she says.”

I laughed. The laugh was out of me before I thought I wasn’t doing
myself any favor if I wanted to hear this story to the end. But Homer
grinned himself and nodded.

“I know. And you know I don’t like to argue with anyone, Dave. But
there’s a difference between having your leg pulled and getting it shook
like a damn apple-tree.

“ ‘You don’t believe me,’ she says.

“ ‘Well, it’s hard to believe, missus,’ I said.

“ ‘Leave that grout to dry and I’ll show you,’ she says. “You can finish
behind the tub tomorrow. Come on, Homer. I’ll leave a note for Worth—
he may not be back tonight anyway—and you can call your wife! We’ll
be sitting down to dinner in the Pilot’s Grille in’—she looks at her
watch—‘two hours and forty-five minutes from right now. And if it’s a
minute longer, I’ll buy you a bottle of Irish Mist to take home with you.
You see, my dad was right. Save enough miles and you’ll save time, even
if you have to go through every damn bog and sump in Kennebec County
to do it. Now what do you say?’

“She was lookin at me with her brown eyes just like lamps, there was
a devilish look in them that said turn your cap around back’rds, Homer,
and climb aboard this hoss, I be first and you be second and let the devil
take the hindmost, and there was a grin on her face that said the exact
same thing, and I tell you, Dave, I wanted to go. I didn’t even want to
top that damn can of grout. And I certain sure didn’t want to drive that
go-devil of hers. I wanted just to sit in it on the shotgun side and watch
her get in, see her skirt come up a little, see her pull it down over her
knees or not, watch her hair shine.”

He trailed off and suddenly let off a sarcastic, choked laugh. That laugh
of his sounded like a shotgun loaded with rock salt.

“Just call up Megan and say, ‘You know ’Phelia Todd, that woman
you’re halfway to being so jealous of now you can’t see straight and can’t
ever find a good word to say about her? Well, her and me is going to

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 15

make this speed-run down to Bangor in that little champagne-colored
she-devil Mercedes of hers, so don’t wait dinner.’

“Just call her up and say that. Oh yes. Oh ayuh.”

And he laughed again with his hands lying there on his legs just as
natural as ever was and I seen something in his face that was almost
hateful and after a minute he took his glass of mineral water from the
railing there and got outside some of it.

“You didn’t go,” I said.

“Not then.”

He laughed, and this laugh was gentler.

“She must have seen something in my face, because it was like she
found herself again. She stopped looking like a sorority girl and just
looked like ’Phelia Todd again. She looked down at the notebook like
she didn’t know what it was she had been holding and put it down by
her side, almost behind her skirt.

“I says, ‘I’d like to do just that thing, missus, but I got to finish up here,
and my wife has got a roast on for dinner.’

“She says, ‘I understand, Homer—I just got a little carried away. I do
that a lot. All the time, Worth says.’ Then she kinda straightened up and
says, ‘But the offer holds, any time you want to go. You can even throw
your shoulder to the back end if we get stuck somewhere. Might save me
five dollars.’ And she laughed.

“ ‘I’ll take you up on it, missus,’ I says, and she seen that I meant what
I said and wasn’t just being polite.

“ ‘And before you just go believing that a hundred and sixteen miles
to Bangor is out of the question, get out your own map and see how many
miles it would be as the crow flies.’

“I finished the tiles and went home and ate leftovers—there wa’n’t no
roast, and I think ’Phelia Todd knew it—and after Megan was in bed, I
got out my yardstick and a pen and my Mobil map of the state, and I did
what she had told me ... because it had laid hold of my mind a bit, you
see. I drew a straight line and did out the calculations accordin to the
scale of miles. I was some surprised. Because if you went from Castle
Rock up there to Bangor like one of those little Piper Cubs could fly on
a clear day—if you didn’t have to mind lakes, or stretches of lumber
company woods that was chained off, or bogs, or crossing rivers where
there wasn’t no bridges, why, it would just be seventy-nine miles, give
or take.”

I jumped a little.

“Measure it yourself, if you don’t believe me,” Homer said. “I never
knew Maine was so small until I seen that.”

16 Stephen King

He had himself a drink, and then looked around at me.

“There come a time the next spring when Megan was away in New
Hampshire visiting her brother. I had to go down to the Todds’ house to
take off the storm doors and put on the screens, and her little Mercedes
go-devil was there. She was down by herself.

“She come to the door and says: ‘Homer! Have you come to put on the
screen doors?’

“And right off I says: ‘No, missus, I come to see if you want to give me
a ride down to Bangor the short way.’

“Well, she looked at me with no expression on her face at all, and I
thought she had forgotten all about it. I felt my face gettin red, the way
it will when you feel you just pulled one hell of a boner. Then, just when
I was getting ready to pologize, her face busts into that grin again and
she says, ‘You just stand right there while I get my keys. And don’t change
your mind, Homer!’ ”

“She come back a minute later with em in her hand. ‘If we get stuck,
you’ll see mosquitoes just about the size of dragonflies.’

“ ‘I’ve seen em as big as English sparrows up in Rangely, missus,’ I said,
‘and I guess we’re both a spot too heavy to be carried off.’

“She laughs. ‘Well, I warned you, anyway. Come on, Homer.’

“ ‘And if we ain’t there in two hours and forty-five minutes,’ I says,
kinda sly, ‘you was gonna buy me a bottle of Irish Mist.’

“She looks at me kinda surprised, the driver’s door of the go-devil open
and one foot inside. ‘Hell, Homer,’ she says, ‘I told you that was the Blue
Ribbon for then. I’ve found a way up there that’s shorter. We’ll be there
in two and a half hours. Get in, Homer. We are going to roll.’ ”

He paused again, hands lying calm on his thighs, his eyes dulling,
perhaps seeing that champagne-colored two-seater heading up the
Todds’ steep driveway.

“She stood the car still at the end of it and says, ‘You sure?’

“ ‘Let her rip,’ I says. The ball bearing in her ankle rolled and that heavy
foot come down. I can’t tell you nothing much about whatall happened
after that. Except after a while I couldn’t hardly take my eyes off her.
There was somethin wild that crep into her face, Dave—somethin wild
and something free, and it frightened my heart. She was beautiful, and
I was took with love for her, anyone would have been, any man, anyway,
and maybe any woman too, but I was scairto/her too, because she looked
like she could kill you if her eye left the road and fell on you and she
decided to love you back. She was wearin blue jeans and a old white shirt
with the sleeves rolled up—I had a idea she was maybe fixin to paint
somethin on the back deck when I came by—but after we had been goin

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 17

for a while seemed like was was dressed in nothin but all this white
billowy stuff like a pitcher in one of those old gods-and-goddesses books.”

He thought, looking out across the lake, his face very somber.

“Like the huntress that was supposed to drive the moon across the
sky.”

“Diana?”

“Ayuh. Moon was her go-devil. ’Phelia looked like that to me and I just
tell you fair out that I was stricken in love for her and never would have
made a move, even though I was some younger then than I am now. I
would not have made a move even had I been twenty, although I suppose
I might of at sixteen, and been killed for it—killed if she looked at me
was the way it felt.

“She was like that woman drivin the moon across the sky, halfway up
over the splashboard with gossamer stoles all flyin out behind her in
silver cobwebs and her hair streamin back to show the dark little hollows
of her temples, lashin those horses and tellin me to get along faster and
never mind how they blowed, just faster, faster, faster.

“We went down a lot of woods roads—the first two or three I knew,
and after that I didn’t know none of them. We must have been a sight to
those trees that had never seen nothing with a motor in it before but big
old pulp-trucks and snowmobiles; that little go-devil that would most
likely have looked more at home on the Sunset Boulevard than shooting
through those woods, spitting and bulling its way up one hill and then
slamming down the next through those dusty green bars of afternoon
sunlight—she had the top down and I could smell everything in those
woods, and you know what an old fine smell that is, like something which
has been mostly left alone and is not much troubled. We went on across
corduroy which had been laid over some of the boggiest parts, and black
sand squelched up between some of those cut logs and she laughed like
a kid. Some of the logs was old and rotted, because there hadn’t been
nobody down a couple of those roads—except for her, that is—in I’m
going to say five or ten years. We was alone, except for the birds and
whatever animals seen us. The sound of that go-devil’s engine, first
buzzin along and then windin up high and fierce when she punched in
the clutch and shifted down .. . that was the only motor-sound I could
hear. And although I knew we had to be close to someplace all the time—I
mean, these days you always are—I started to feel like we had gone back
in time, and there wasn’t nothing. That if we stopped and I climbed a
high tree, I wouldn’t see nothing in any direction but woods and woods
and more woods. And all the time she’s just hammering that thing along,
her hair all out behind her, smilin, her eyes flashin. So we come out on

18 Stephen King

the Speckled Bird Mountain Road and for a while I known where we
were again, and then she turned off and for just a little bit I thought I
knew, and then I didn’t even bother to kid myself no more. We went
cut-slam down another woods road, and then we come out—I swear
it—on a nice paved road with a sign that said motorway b. You ever heard
of a road in the state of Maine that was called motorway b?”

“No,” I says. “Sounds English.”

“Ayuh. Looked English. These trees like willows overhung the road.
‘Now watch out here, Homer,’ she says, ‘one of those nearly grabbed me
a month ago and gave me an Indian bum.’

“I didn’t know what she was talkin about and started to say so, and
then I seen that even though there was no wind, the branches of those
trees was dippin down—they was waverin down. They looked black and
wet inside the fuzz of green on them. I couldn’t believe what I was seein.
Then one of em snatched off my cap and I knew I wasn’t asleep. ‘Hi!’ I
shouts, ‘Give that back!’

“ ‘Too late now, Homer,’ she says, and laughs. ‘There’s daylight, just
up ahead ... we’re okay.’

“Then another one of ’em comes down, on her side this time, and
snatches at her—I swear it did. She ducked, and it caught in her hair and
pulled a lock of it out. ‘Ouch, dammit that hurts!' she yells, but she was
laughin, too. The car swerved a little when she ducked and I got a look
into the woods and holy God, Dave! Everythin in there was movin. There
was grass wavin and plants that was all knotted together so it seemed
like they made faces, and I seen somethin sittin in a squat on top of a
stump, and it looked like tree-toad, only it was as big as a full-growed
cat.

“Then we come out of the shade to the top of a hill and she says, ‘There!
That was exciting, wasn’t it?’ as if she was talkin about no more than a
walk through the Haunted House at the Fryeburg Fair.

“About five minutes later we swung onto another of her woods roads.
I didn’t want no more woods right then—I can tell you that for sure—but
these were just plain old woods. Half an hour after that, we was pulling
into the parking lot of the Pilot’s Grille in Bangor. She points to that little
odometer for trips and says, ‘Take a gander, Homer.’ I did, and it said
111.6. ‘What do you think now? Do you believe in my shortcut?’

“That wild look had mostly faded out of her, and she was just ’Phelia
Todd again. But that other look wasn’t entirely gone. It was like she was
two women, ’Phelia and Diana, and the part of her that was Diana was
so much in control when she was driving the back roads that the part
that was ’Phelia didn’t have no idea that her shortcut was taking her

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 19

through places ... places that ain’t on any map of Maine, not even on
those survey-squares.

“She says again, ‘What do you think of my shortcut, Homer?’

“And I says the first thing to come into my mind, which ain’t something
you’d usually say to a lady like ’Phelia Todd. ‘It’s a real pill-cutter, missus,’
I says.

“She laughs, just as pleased as punch, and I seen it then, just as clear
as glass: She didn’t remember none of the funny stuff. Not the willow-
branches—except they weren’t willows, not at all, not anything like em,
or anything else—that grabbed off m’hat, not that motorway b sign, or
that awful-lookin toad-thing. She didn’t remember none of that funny
stuff! Either I had dreamed it was there or she had dreamed it wasn’t. All
I knew for sure, Dave, was that we had rolled only a hundred and eleven
miles and gotten to Bangor, and that wasn’t no daydream; it was right
there on the little go-devil’s odometer, in black and white.

“ ‘Well, it is,’ she says. ‘It is a piss-cutter. I only wish I could get Worth
to give it a go sometime . . . but he’ll never get out of his rut unless
someone blasts him out of it, and it would probably take a Titan II missile
to do that, because I believe he has built himself a fallout shelter at the
bottom of that rut. Come on in, Homer, and let’s dump some dinner into
you.’

“And she bought me one hell of a dinner, Dave, but I couldn’t eat very
much of it. I kep thinkin about what the ride back might be like, now
that it was drawing down dark. Then, about halfway through the meal,
she excused herself and made a telephone call. When she came back she
ast me if I would mind drivin the go-devil back to Castle Rock for her.
She said she had talked to some woman who was on the same school
committee as her, and the woman said they had some kind of problem
about somethin or other. She said she’d grab herself a Hertz car if Worth
couldn’t see her back down. ‘Do you mind awfully driving back in the
dark?’ she ast me.

“She looked at me, kinda smilin, and I knew she remembered some of
it all right—Christ knows how much, but she remembered enough to
know I wouldn’t want to try her way after dark, if ever at all... although
I seen by the light in her eyes that it wouldn’t have bothered her a bit.

“So I said it wouldn’t bother me, and I finished my meal better than
when I started it. It was drawin down dark by the time we was done, and
she run us over to the house of the woman she’d called. And when she
gets out she looks at me with that same light in her eyes and says, ‘Now,
you’re sure you don’t want to wait, Homer? I saw a couple of side roads

20 Stephen King

just today, and although I can’t find them on my maps, I think they might
chop a few miles.’

“I says, ‘Well, missus, I would, but at my age the best bed to sleep in
is my own, I’ve found. I’ll take your car back and never put a ding in her
... although I guess I’ll probably put on some more miles than you did.’

“Then she laughed, kind of soft, and she give me a kiss. That was the
best kiss I ever had in my whole life, Dave. It was just on the cheek, and
it was the chaste kiss of a married woman, but it was as ripe as a peach,
or like those flowers that open in the dark, and when her lips touched
my skin I felt like... I don’t know exactly what I felt like, because a man
can’t easily hold on to those things that happened to him with a girl who
was ripe when the world was young or how those things felt—I’m talking
around what I mean, but I think you understand. Those things all get a
red cast to them in your memory and you cannot see through it at all.

“ ‘You’re a sweet man, Homer, and I love you for listening to me and
riding with me,’ she says. ‘Drive safe.’

“Then in she went, to that woman’s house. Me, I drove home.”

“How did you go?” I asked.

He laughed softly. “By the turnpike, you damned fool,” he said, and I
never seen so many wrinkles in his face before as I did then.

He sat there, looking into the sky.

“Came the summer she disappeared. I didn’t see much of her ... that
was the summer we had the fire, you’ll remember, and then the big storm
that knocked down all the trees. A busy time for caretakers. Oh, I thought
about her from time to time, and about that day, and about that kiss,
and it started to seem like a dream to me. Like one time, when I was out
plowing George Bascomb’s west field, the one that looks acrost the lake
at the mountains, dreamin about what teenage boys dream of. And I
pulled up this rock with the harrow blades, and it split open, and it bled.
At least, it looked to me like it bled. Red stuff come runnin out of the
cleft in the rock and soaked into the soil. And I never told no one but my
mother, and I never told her what it meant to me, or what happened to
me, although she washed my drawers and maybe she knew. Anyway, she
suggested I ought to pray on it. Which I did, but I never got no
enlightenment, and after a while something started to suggest to my
mind that it had been a dream. It’s that way, sometimes. There is holes
in the middle, Dave. Do you know that?”

“Yes,” I says, thinking of one night when I’d seen something. That was
in ’59, a bad year for us, but my kids didn’t know it was a bad year; all
they knew was that they wanted to eat just like always. I’d seen a bunch
of whitetail in Henry Brugger’s back field, and I was out there after dark

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 21

/ *

with a jacklight in August. You can shoot two when they’re summer-fat;
the second’ll come back and sniff at the first as if to say What the hell? Is
it fall already? and you can pop him like a bowlin pin. You can hack off
enough meat to feed yowwens for six weeks and bury what’s left. Those
are two whitetails the hunters who come in November don’t get a shot
at, but kids have to eat. Like the man from Massachusetts said, he’d like
to be able to afford to live here the year around, and all I can say is
sometimes you pay for the privilege after dark. So there I was, and I seen
this big orange light in the sky; it comes down and down, and I stood
and watched it with my mouth hung on down to my breastbone and
when it hit the lake the whole of it was lit up for a minute a purple-orange
that seemed to go right up to the sky in rays. Wasn’t nobody ever said
nothing to me about that light, and I never said nothing to nobody myself,
partly because I was afraid they’d laugh, but also because they’d wonder
what the hell I’d been doing out there after dark to start with. And after
a while it was like Homer said—it seemed like a dream I had once had,
and it didn’t signify to me because I couldn’t make nothing of it which
would turn under my hand. It was like a moonbeam. It didn’t have no
handle and it didn’t have no blade. I couldn’t make it work so I left it
alone, like a man does when he knows the day is going to come up
nevertheless.

“There are holes in the middle of things,” Homer said, and he sat up
straighter, like he was mad. “Right in the damn middle of things, not even
to the left or right where your p’riph’ral vision is and you could say, ‘Well,
but hell—’ They are there and you go around them like you’d go around
a pothole in the road that would break an axle. You know? And you forget
it. Or like if you are plowin, you can plow a dip. But if there’s somethin
like a break in the earth, where you see darkness, like a cave might be
there, you say ‘Go around, old hoss. Leave that alone! I got a good shot
over here to the left’ards.’ Because it wasn’t a cave you was lookin for,
or some kind of college excitement, but good plowin.

“Holes in the middle of things.”

He fell still a long time then and I let him be still. Didn’t have no urge
to move him. And at last he says:

“She disappeared in August. I seen her for the first time in early July,
and she looked . . . “Homer turned to me and spoke each word with
careful spaced emphasis. “Dave Owens, she looked gorgeous! Gorgeous
and wild and almost untamed. The little wrinkles I’d started to notice
around her eyes all seemed to be gone. Worth Todd, he was at some
conference or something in Boston. And she stands there at the edge of

22 Stephen King

the deck—I was out in the middle with my shirt off—and she says
‘Homer, you’ll never believe it.’

“ ‘No, missus, but I’ll try,’ I says.

“ ‘I found two new roads,’ she says, ‘and I got to Bangor this last time
in just sixty-seven miles.’

“I remembered what she said before and I says, ‘That’s not possible,
missus. Beggin your pardon, but I did the mileage on the map myself,
and seventy-nine is tops ... as the crow flies.’

“She laughed, and she looked prettier than ever. Like a goddess in the
sun, on one of those hills in a story where there’s nothing but green grass
and fountains and no puckies to tear at a man’s forearms at all. ‘That’s
right,’ she says, ‘and you can’t run a mile in under four minutes. It’s been
mathematically proved .’

“ ‘It ain’t the same,’ I says.

“ ‘It’s the same,’ she says. ‘Fold the map and see how many miles it is
then, Homer. It can be a little less than a straight line if you fold it a little,
or it can be a lot less if you fold it a lot.’

“I remembered our ride then, the way you remember a dream, and I
says, ‘Missus, you can fold a map on paper but you can’t fold land. Or at
least you shouldn’t ought to try. You want to leave it alone.’

“ ‘No, sir,’ she says. ‘It’s the one thing right now in my life that I won’t
leave alone, because it’s there, and it’s mine.’

“Three weeks later—this would be about two weeks before she
disappeared—she give me a call from Bangor. She says, ‘Worth has gone
to New York, and I am coming down. I’ve misplaced my damn key,
Homer. I’d like you to open the house so I can get in.’

“Well, that call come at eight o’clock, just when it was starting to come
down dark. I had a sanwidge and a beer before leaving—about twenty
minutes. Then I took a ride down there. All in all. I’d say I was forty-five
minutes. When I got down there to the Todds’, I seen there was a light
on in the pantry I didn’t leave on while I was comin down the driveway.
I was lookin at that, and I almost run right into her little go-devil. It was
parked kind of on a slant, the way a drunk would park it, and it was
splashed with muck all the way up to the windows, and there was this
stuff stuck in that mud along the body that looked like seaweed ... only
when my lights hit it, it seemed to be movin. I parked behind it and got
out of my truck. That stuff wasn’t seaweed, but it was weeds, and it was
movin ... kinda slow and sluggish, like it was dyin. I touched a piece of
it, and it tried to wrap itself around my hand. It felt nasty and awful. I
drug my hand away and wiped it on my pants. I went around to the front
of the car. It looked like it had come through about ninety miles of splash

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 23

and low country. Looked tired, it did. Bugs was splashed all over the
windshield—only they didn’t look like no kind of bugs / ever seen before.
There was a moth that was about the size of a sparrow, its wings still
flappin a little, feeble and dyin. There were things like mosquitoes, only
they had real eyes that you could see—and they seemed to be seein me.
I could hear those weeds scrapin against the body of the go-devil, dyin,
tryin to get a hold on somethin. And all I could think was Where in the
hell has she been? And how did she get here in only three-quarters of an
hour? Then I seen somethin else. There was some kind of a animal
half-smashed onto the radiator grille, just under where that Mercedes
ornament is—the one that looks kinda like a star looped up into a circle?
Now most small animals you kill on the road is bore right under the car,
because they are crouching when it hits them, hoping it’ll just go over
and leave them with their hide still attached to their meat. But every now
and then one will jump, not away, but right at the damn car, as if to get
in one good bite of whatever the buggardly thing is that’s going to kill
it—I have known that to happen. This thing had maybe done that. And
it looked mean enough to jump a Sherman tank. It looked like something
which come of a mating between a woodchuck and weasel, but there
was other stuff thrown in that a body didn’t even want to look at. It hurt
your eyes, Dave; worse’n that, it hurt your mind. Its pelt was matted with
blood, and there was claws sprung out of the pads on its feet like a cat’s
claws, only longer. It had big yellowy eyes, only they was glazed. When
I was a kid I had a porcelain marble—a croaker—that looked like that.
And teeth. Long thin needle teeth that looked almost like darning
needles, stickin out of its mouth. Some of them was sunk right into that
steel grillwork. That’s why it was still hangin on; it had hung its own self
on by the teeth. I looked at it and knowed it had a headful of poison just
like a rattlesnake, and it jumped at that go-devil when it saw it was about
to be run down, trying to bite it to death. And I wouldn’t be the one to
try and yonk it offa there because I had cuts on my hands—hay-cuts—and
I thought it would kill me as dead as a stone parker if some of that poison
seeped into the cuts.

“I went around to the driver’s door and opened it. The inside light
come on, and I looked at that special odometer that she set for trips ...
and what I seen there was 31.6.

“I looked at that for a bit, and then I went to the back door. She’d
forced the screen and broke the glass by the lock so she could get her
hand through and let herself in. There was a note that said: ‘Dear
Homer—got here a little sooner than I thought I would. Found a shortcut,
and it is a dilly! You hadn’t come yet so I let myself in like a burglar.

24 Stephen King

Worth is coming day after tomorrow. Can you get the screen fixed and
the door reglazed by then? Hope so. Things like that always bother him.
If I don’t come out to say hello, you’ll know I’m asleep. The drive was
very tiring, but I was here in no time! Ophelia.’

“Tirin! I took another look at that bogey-thing hangin offa the grille
of her car, and I thought Yessir, it must have been tiring. By God, yes.”

He paused again, and cracked a restless knuckle.

“I seen her only once more. About a week later. Worth was there, but
he was swimmin out in the lake, back and forth, back and forth, like he
was sawin wood or signin papers. More like he was signin papers, I guess.

“ ‘Missus,’ I says, ‘this ain’t my business, but you ought to leave well
enough alone. That night you come back and broke the glass of the door
to come in, I seen something hangin off the front of your car—’

“ ‘Oh, the chuck! I took care of that,’ she says.

“ ‘Christ!’ I says. T hope you took some care!’

“ ‘I wore Worth’s gardening gloves,’ she said. ‘It wasn’t anything
anyway, Homer, but a jumped-up woodchuck with a little poison in it.’

“ ‘But missus,’ I says, ‘where there’s woodchucks there’s bears. And if
that’s what the woodchucks look like along your shortcut, what’s going
to happen to you if a bear shows up?’

“She looked at me, and I seen that other woman in her—that Diana-
woman. She says, ‘If things are different along those roads, Homer,
maybe I am different, too. Look at this.’

“Her hair was done up in a clip at the back, looked sort of like a
butterfly and had a stick through it. She let it down. It was the kind of
hair that would make a man wonder what it would look like spread out
over a pillow. She says, ‘It was coming in gray, Homer. Do you see any
gray?’ And she spread it with her fingers so the sun could shine on it.

“ ‘No’m,’ I says.

“She looks at me, her eyes all a-sparkle, and she says, ‘Your wife is a
good woman, Homer Buckland, but she has seen me in the store and in
the post office, and we’ve passed the odd word or two, and I have seen
her looking at my hair in a kind of satisfied way that only women know.

I know what she says, and what she tells her friends . . . that Ophelia
Todd has started dyeing her hair. But I have not. I have lost my way
looking for a shortcut more than once . .. lost my way ... and lost my
gray.’ And she laughed, not like a college girl but like a girl in high school.

I admired her and longed for her beauty, but I seen that other beauty in
her face as well just then .. . and I felt afraid again. Afraid for her, and
afraid o/her.

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 25

* *

“ ‘Missus,’ I says, ‘you stand to lose more than a little sta’ch in your
hair.’

“ ‘No,’ she said. ‘I tell you I am different over there ... I am all myself
over there. When I am going along that road in my little car I am not
Ophelia Todd, Worth Todd’s wife who could never carry a child to term,
or that woman who tried to write poetry and failed at it, or the woman
who sits and takes notes in committee meetings, or anything or anyone
else. When I am on that road I am in the heart of myself, and I feel like—’

“ ‘Diana' I said.

“She looked at me kind of funny and kind of surprised, and then she
laughed. ‘O like some goddess, I suppose,’ she said. ‘She will do better
than most because I am a night person—I love to stay up until my book
is done or until the National Anthem comes on the TV, and because I am
very pale, like the moon—Worth is always saying I need a tonic, or blood
tests or some sort of similar bosh. But in her heart what every woman
wants to be is some kind of goddess, I think—men pick up a ruined echo
of that thought and try to put them on pedestals (a woman, who will pee
down her own leg if she does not squat! It’s funny when you stop to think
of it)—but what a man senses is not what a woman wants. A woman
wants to be in the clear, is all. To stand if she will, or walk... “Her eyes
turned toward that little go-devil in the driveway, and narrowed. Then
she smiled. ‘Or to drive, Homer. A man will not see that. He thinks a
goddess wants to loll on a slope somewhere on the foothills of Olympus
and eat fruit, but there is no god or goddess in that. All a woman wants
is what a man wants—a woman wants to drive.'

“ ‘Be careful where you drive, missus, is all,’ I says, and she laughs and
give me a kiss spang in the middle of the forehead.

“She says, T will, Homer,’ but it didn’t mean nothing, and I known it,
because she said it like a man who says he’ll be careful to his wife or his
girl when he knows he won’t... can’t.

“I went back to my truck and waved to her once, and it was a week
later that Worth reported her missing. Her and that go-devil both. Todd
waited seven years and had her declared legally dead, and then he waited
another year for good measure—I’ll give the sucker that much—and then
he married the second Missus Todd, the one that just went by. And I don’t
expect you’ll believe a single damn word of the whole yarn.”

In the sky one of those big flat-bottomed clouds moved enough to
disclose the ghost of the moon—half-full and pale as milk. And some¬
thing in my heart leaped up at the sight, half in fright, half in love.

“I do though,” I said. “Every frigging damned word. And even if it ain’t
true, Homer, it ought to be.”

26 Stephen King

He give me a hug around the neck with his forearm, which is all men
can do since the world don’t let them kiss but only women, and laughed,
and got up.

“Even if it shouldn’t ought to be, it is,” he said. He got his watch out
of his pants and looked at it. “I got to go down the road and check on
the Scott place. You want to come?”

“I believe I’ll sit here for a while,” I said, “and think.”

He went to the steps, then turned back and looked at me, half-smiling.
“I believe she was right,” he said. “She was different along those roads
she found . . . wasn’t nothing that would dare touch her. You or me,
maybe, but not her.

“And I believe she’s young.”

Then he got in his truck and set off to check the Scott place.

That was two years ago, and Homer has since gone to Vermont, as I
think I told you. One night he came over to see me. His hair was combed,
he had a shave, and he smelled of some nice lotion. His face was clear
and his eyes were alive. That night he looked sixty instead of seventy,
and I was glad for him and I envied him and I hated him a little, too.
Arthritis is one buggardly great old fisherman, and that night Homer
didn’t look like arthritis had any fishhooks sunk into his hands the way
they were sunk into mine.

“I’m going,” he said.

“Ayuh?”

“Ayuh.”

“All right; did you see to forwarding your mail?”

“Don’t want none forwarded,” he said. “My bills are paid. I am going
to make a clean break.”

“Well, give me your address. I’ll drop you a line from one time to the
another, old hoss.” Already I could feel loneliness settling over me like a
cloak . . . and looking at him, I knew that things were not quite what
they seemed.

“Don’t have none yet,” he said.

“All right,” I said. “Is it Vermont, Homer?”

“Well,” he said, “It’ll do for people who want to know.”

I almost didn’t say it and then I did. “What does she look like now?”

“Like Diana,” he said. “But she is kinder.”

“I envy you, Homer,” I said, and I did.

I stood at the door. It was twilight in that deep part of summer when
the fields fill with perfume and Queen Anne’s Lace. A full moon was
beating a silver track across the lake. He went across my porch and down

Mrs. Todd's Shortcut 27

the steps. A car was standing on the soft shoulder of the road, its engine
idling heavy, the way the old ones do that still run full bore straight ahead
and damn the torpedoes. Now that I think of it, the car looked like a
torpedo. It looked beat up some, but as if it could go the ton without
breathin hard. He stopped at the foot of my steps and picked something
up—it was his gas-can, the big one that holds ten gallons. He went down
my walk to the passenger side of the car. She leaned over and opened
the door. The inside light came on and just for a moment I saw her, long
red hair around her face, her forehead shining like a lamp. Shining like
the moon. He got in and she drove away. I stood out on my porch and
watched the taillights of her little go-devil twinkling red in the dark...
getting smaller and smaller. They were like embers, then they were like
flickerflies, and then they were gone.

Vermont, I tell the folks from town, and Vermont they believe, because
it’s as far as most of them can see inside their heads. Sometimes I almost
believe it myself, mostly when I’m tired and done up. Other times I think
about them, though—all this October I have done so, it seems, because
October is the time when men think mostly about far places and the roads
which might get them there. I sit on the bench in front of Bell’s Market
and think about Homer Buckland and about the beautiful girl who leaned
over to open his door when he come down that path with the full red
gasoline can in his right hand—she looked like a girl of no more than
sixteen, a girl on her learner’s permit, and her beauty was terrible, but I
believe it would no longer kill the man it turned itself on; for a moment
her eyes lit on me, I was not killed, although part of me died at her feet.

Olympus must be a glory to the eyes and the heart, and there are those
who crave it and those who find a clear way to it, mayhap, but I know
Castle Rock like the back of my hand and I could never leave it for no
shortcuts where the roads may go; in October the sky over the lake is no
glory but it is passing fair, with those big white clouds that move so slow;
I sit here on the bench, and think about ’Phelia Todd and Homer
Buckland, and I don’t necessarily wish I was where they are... but I still
wish I was a smoking man.

Are You Afraid of the Dark?

Charles L. Grant

Charles L. Grant was born in New Jersey in 1942 and has lived in that
state most of his life, except for four years at Trinity College in Connecticut
and two years as an MP in Vietnam. Grant’s first story was published in
1968, while he was a high school teacher. He turned to writing full-time
in 1975. He has published some twenty books—novels and short story
collections—and has edited almost as many anthologies, most notably
the Shadows series for Doubleday. In addition, Grant has published over
eighty short stories in various magazines and anthologies, and (under
the pseudonyms Felicia Andrews and Deborah Lewis) he has written a
dozen gothic novels. His recent books include Night Songs, The Tea Party,
and The Long Night of the Grave, as well as the anthologies. Shadows
8, Midnights 1 ,and Greystone Bay. In 1984 Grant contributed one-third
of the three-author anthology series from Dark Harvest, Night Visions,
and in 1985 he is guest editor of Night Visions 2.

Somehow Grant found time from his busy schedule to be Guest of
Honour at Fantasycon IX in Birmingham, England this past fall. It was
in the Fantasycon IX Programme Booklet that “Are You Afraid of the
Dark?”first appeared. The story is one of Grant’s best, and it is a pleasure
to be able to present it to the wider audience it deserves.

The storm began moving just below the horizon, setting houses and trees
in sharp silhouette, freezing the clouds in gray and roiling white; it buried
the sunset and drove off the stars and replaced the moon’s shadows with
strobic shadows of its own.

Yet it was harmless out there, far enough away to make people smile,
glance at their watches and walk only a bit faster. There was no warning
in the forecast, and its own warning was muttered, softened by the spring
air just an hour ago filled with sun and new flowers and leaves brilliant
green on the trees along the curbs.

Then the breeze became a wind, and the storm turned around, a

29

30 Charles L. Grant

panther stalking the night with flashes of lightning where its claws
touched the ground, grumblings of thunder when it spotted its prey.

The breeze became a wind, and the temperature dropped, and all that
was left was the waiting for the rain.

The padded deacon’s bench had been turned around to face the picture
window in the den. The floral draperies had been pulled back, the lights
had been turned off, and the backyard was visible only between the
blinks of an eye, as the storm moved overhead and crashed down on the
house. Lightning escaped the confines of black clouds, flaring, crackling,
giving the trees angled movement and turning the back hedge into a
huge black wall. The ornamental wishing well, the birdbath, the tool
shed in the comer, all of them curiously flat when the air burned
blue-white ahead of the thunder. The leaves were silver, the grass pale
gray, and the reflections in the pane were bloodless and transparent.

“She’s right,” Jeremy Kneale said, squirming on the bench but not
wanting to leave. “Bernie’s right, it’s just like a movie.”

“It is not. It’s stupid. It’s dark out, can’t you see that?” Stacey flinched
at the next lightning bolt, but he still wasn’t impressed. “It’s dumb. I
wanna watch TV.”

«

“Bemie says we can’t,” Will reminded him. “She says we have to wait
until something good comes on.”

“Her real name,” said Stacey, “is Bernadette, and Bernadette is a real
pain in the ass.”

Jeremy winced at the way his friend talked about their new babysitter,
but he didn’t say a word. Scolding Stacey Parsons was a waste of time.
He knew that. He had heard his mother tell his father that a hundred
times, and heard them wonder how the boy’s parents managed without
strangling him. That part was a joke; at least, he thought it was a joke.

Behind them, through the swinging door that led into the kitchen, they
could hear Bemie working. Making popcorn. Fixing trays. Getting glasses
from the cupboard and pouring them soda.

“I feel stupid,” Will confessed at last.

Jeremy did too, but he wouldn’t admit it. He was in enough trouble
already, and the one thing he didn’t need was Bemie telling his folks that
he was being difficult again. Yet it wasn’t his fault. He liked to explore
things, go places, find new games to play with his best friends in the
whole world. Just because it sometimes got him into trouble with the
neighbors, or with people he didn’t even know, didn’t mean he was bad.
Like the window this afternoon at the toy shop. He didn’t mean to break
it, but Stacey had ducked when he’d tossed the rock at him. Not a throw,

0

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 31

just a toss, and it must have hit the pane just right because the next thing
they knew there was glass all over the pavement and lots of big people
reaching for them so they wouldn’t run away.

It was an accident.

His parents didn’t believe him.

And parents, Stacey had said once, never believed the kid when there
was a grownup around. You had to be big to be believed; you had to be
able to defend yourself with something else besides tears.

“I’m hungry,” Will Young said, standing and walking away from the
window. He turned on a lamp, blinking at the light.

“Yeah,” said Stacey. He stood, gestured, and he and Jeremy turned
the bench around where it belonged. Then he closed the drapes and sat
again, hands in his lap, feet swinging. “I wish she’d hurry up.”

“It’s like prison,” Will said, rubbing his hands together and grinning.
“Bernie is the guard, see, and our parents are off to see the governor, to
find out when they’re going to throw the switch.”

“Where’d you hear that?” Jeremy asked.

“Saw it in a movie.”

Jeremy shook his head. “I saw that movie, and you got it wrong.
They’re supposed to find out if the governor is going to stop them from
throwing the switch.”

“Sure,” Stacey said. “Did you see the look on my father’s face when he
found out what happened today?” He shuddered. “I know that look. He’s
gonna be right there by the guy with the black mask. He’s gonna throw
the switch himself.”

Jeremy had to agree. He had never seen any of their parents so angry
before. As if he and his buddies had deliberately set out to find trouble,
or cause it when they couldn’t find it, and lied about it when they did.
Of course, they didn’t always tell the truth because then they’d really get
clobbered. As it was, they were supposed to stay on their own property
for a whole two weeks, and the only reason they were allowed together
tonight was because his father had decided it was time the six grownups
got together and decided what to do about taming their hellions.

He didn’t know exactly what hellions meant when he heard his father
on the phone with Mr. Young the other night, but he did know it wasn’t
good. And he knew that this time they weren’t going to be able to cry or
beg or pout their way out of whatever punishment there was going to
be. Staying home wasn’t punishment; staying home was only getting
ready for whatever big stuff was coming after.

Lightning; and thunder.

Ashes in the fireplace shifting into piles.

32 Charles L. Grant

The wind rattling the pane and keening through the eaves.

The boys jumped, smiled nervously, and jumped again when the
kitchen door pushed open and Bemie came out with a tray in her hands.
She walked to the cardtable in the middle of the room and put the tray
in the center. There were three glasses filled with soda, a huge bowl of
popcorn, and three chocolate candy bars.

None of the boys moved. They only watched as the babysitter frowned
at the closed drapes, at the tumed-around bench, and at Will still
standing by the floorlamp in the comer. Her short brown hair seemed
darker tonight, her eyes deeper, her nose sharper, and when she brushed
her hands down the side of her dress, she seemed less like a friend than
the guard Will had described.

“I thought,” she said, “you were going to watch the storm.”

“That’s dumb,” Stacey told her.

“Yeah,” Will agreed.

She turned to Jeremy then and waited for his answer.

He shrugged. He didn’t want to get her mad, didn’t want her to tell
his mother and father he was being a pain again. Bemie was all right,
and he wanted to keep her on his side. She had stayed with him twice
before, and with Stacey and Will too, just after the big trouble started,
and though she sometimes made him nervous the way she looked at him,
the way she walked around the house without making a sound, he
thought she was pretty okay, for a grownup.

“Sit,” she said, and pointed at the bench.

They did, sensing something in her manner that forestalled rebellion.
Besides, they could smell the butter on the popcorn, see the bubbles in
the soda, and the chocolate bars were the largest they had ever seen in
their lives.

“We’re going to have a contest,” she told them, standing

behind the table with her hands folded at her waist. “It’s going to be
a lot of fun. The only thing is, you can’t be afraid.”

“Afraid?” Stacey said. “Who’s afraid?”

Bemie smiled slowly. “Aren’t you scared of the dark?”

Stacey laughed, Will sneered, Jeremy pulled on his ear.

She stared at them until Will giggled.

“Stace is scared of the ocean,” he said, taking a punch on the arm.

“Yeah? Well, you’re scared of the dark, you even still gotta nightlight.”

Jeremy kept silent—he was only scared of his parents.

“Good,” she said. “That’s fine, because the contest, you see, is a series
of games that I pick for you to play.”

“Big deal,” said Will, poking Jeremy in the ribs.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 33

“What is it, spin the bottle?” Stacey said, laughing until he saw the
look on her face.

“Thank you,” she said. “Now pay attention, please. I want you to listen
closely. Since you’re not afraid of the dark. I’ll pick something .. .” She
looked to the ceiling, looked down, and touched the table. “If you get
scared, you lose.”

“Jesus, Bemie,” Stacey said. “We’re not babies, you know.”

“I know,” she told him. “And that’s what I told your parents. You’re
not babies any more. You can take it. You’re tough.”

“Right,” Stacey said. Will nodded emphatically, and Jeremy said,
“Take what?”

Bemie ignored him. “The rules are simple: I pick the games, nobody
quits before the end, and for every game you win you get to keep a bar
of this chocolate.”

“That’s not fair!” Stacey complained.

Bemie smiled. “Second place gets popcorn.”

“Hey!” said Will. *

“And last place gets to sleep in the rain.”

Jeremy looked at his friends, looked at Bemie, and decided that this
wasn’t going to be a good night after all.

She looked at her watch. “We’d better get started. I promised your
parents we’d be done before they return. Are you ready?”

They each nodded, staring at the chocolate bars each weighing three
pounds.

“In that case,” she said, in the thunder, in the lightning, while the wind
knocked on the door, “the first game is: ”

hide-and-seek

It was dark, so dark it was like living in a black cloud.

And it was quiet, except for the sound of his breathing.

Will Young closed his mouth and his eyes and wished he wasn’t so fat.
His mother was always yelling at him for eating too much, and for
sneaking food into his bedroom after he was supposed to be asleep. But
he didn’t care. He enjoyed eating. It didn’t matter what there was in the
cupboards or in the refrigerator as long as it was good—and there wasn’t
much he didn’t like.

And he didn’t think he was really gross-and-ugly fat, not like his father
was, with his belly showing even when his shirt was all buttoned. He just
had a little extra here and there around his waist and his face, and that
definitely didn’t stop him from being able to run, or climb, or crawl under

34 Charles L. Grant

the porch; at least his arms didn’t have all that flab hanging down, and
at least his thighs didn’t rub together because there was no room between
them.

Nevertheless, he wished now he was a little slimmer, because then he
could squeeze a bit farther back in the closet, maybe behind the golf bag
that belonged to Jerry’s father. He didn’t think he’d have to stay here
very long because Stacey said it was a dumb game and didn’t want to
play and would probably deliberately get himself caught first. Jerry knew
the house better than anyone, but Will thought he was scared of
something and would probably head right for the cellar, the first place
Bemie would look.

The huge closet in the upstairs hall, then, was almost perfect when he
found it. Clothes and coats hanging from the rail, boxes and stuff stacked
on the floor, and the door so snug no light came underneath it.

He reached out his hands and felt around him, trying to move things
in front and move himself farther back, without making any noise. He
breathed through his mouth. He froze whenever he heard footsteps
passing outside.

And he finally reached the comer after moving the golf bag aside.

Perfect. Dark, but perfect. Bemie would have to declare him the
winner of this game, no question about it.

He grinned, and rubbed his hands together.

He pulled his knees up to his chest, and listened to the muffled spill
of thunder over the roof.

And heard something move on the other side of the closet.

He blinked and cocked his head, frowning as he listened as hard as he
could and wondering what it was, or maybe it was his imagination.

A scratching , soft and slow, maybe it’s a rat or a bat or something that
lives in the back of the closet and waits for dopes like him to play stupid
baby games in the middle of a storm; a scratching, soft and slow, and
something suddenly brushed quickly over his face. He almost yelled as
he lashed out to knock it away, nearly yelled again when his fingers were
caught, trapped in something that had round hard teeth. His free hand
grabbed for it while he pushed deeper into the corner, grabbed and
yanked, and something fell over his face.

He did yell, then, but the sound was muffled, all sound deadened as
his feet kicked out and struck the golf bag, as his head slammed against
the wall, as his hands tore and pulled and the thing dropped and tangled
into his lap, and a coat hanger a moment later fell onto his chest.

Shit, he thought as he felt the jacket on his legs, the round buttons,
the smooth lapels. Shit, you’re a jerk.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 35

He shuddered and rolled his shoulders, wiped a hand over his eyes
and felt the perspiration slick on his face. He dried himself with the jacket
and pulled the golf bag back in front of him, proud that he’d fought the
demons and hadn’t been killed.

Besides, this proved that he’d made a good choice. This proved he
could be quiet.

Bemie, he knew then, would never find him now. She might open the
door, but even the light from the hall wouldn’t reach him back here. And
she sure wouldn’t come in, not with that dress on. He giggled, and quickly
covered his mouth. He didn’t know her very well, only the two other
times he’d been over when she’d sat with Jeremy, but he knew she
wouldn’t want to dirty that dress. She was very careful about it. He could
see that. He could see how she stayed away from the walls, and held the
skirt away from anything that might touch it and make it dirty.

She was weird, and not even Jeremy could tell him he was wrong.
Weird, and always looking at them as if they were bugs or something.
Sometimes she was fun, like with the spooky stories she’d tell them, but
most of the time she just sat on the bench in the den and watched them.
Like a guard. Like a dog. Until Mr. and Mrs. Kneale came home, and then
she would put on her coat and leave without even saying goodnight.

Weird.

Really weird.

And a scratching in the comer.

A laugh outside as Stacey ran down the hall, telling his two friends he
was caught but don’t give up, Bemie was a jerk, and they’d share the
chocolate later.

Will smiled and nodded to himself. One down, one to go. All she had
to do was find Jeremy and the game was all his. All that candy, all his.

His stomach growled.

Something scratched lightly in the comer, and he wished there wasn’t
such a draft in here, tickling his neck and making him think there was
something crawling through his hair. The wind outside had found a hole
in the walls, had snuck around the window, and now he was getting cold
and the clothes were moving and rustling together, whispering to each
and scratching.

are you afraid of the dark?

A monster, he thought then, and squeezed his eyes closed, grateful for
the colored lights that swirled in small circles and the curtains of faint
orange that drifted down from the top, disappeared and came back; there
was a monster in the closet.

He shifted, and heard someone walking the hall outside the door.

36 Charles L. Grant

Bemie, he called silently, go find Jeremy, I’m not here.

A monster in with him, but the candy bars were huge and all he had
to do was wait until his best friend was found.

A coat hanger scraped on the metal pole overhead.

Besides, there’s no such things as monsters and I will not be afraid
because I am hungry and I want that candy, he thought, his hands tight
in fists, his eyes still closed.

Something thumped against the golf bag, and the clubs inside rattled.

No such thing. No such thing.

The bag quivered again, and he felt a weight press against the sole of
his sneaker. And he sighed his relief, grinned and shook his head at how
stupid he could be. It had been his foot all the time. He had unthinkingly
stretched a leg out and had kicked the bag with his foot, so there was
nothing to worry about, alone here in the dark.

scratching

Then he heard Jeremy running, probably from his bedroom, not the
cellar after all, telling Will it was over, that he’d won the first game.

He sighed again, loudly, and nodded. He knew he would win. How
could they have thought otherwise? Wasn’t he the champion hide-and-
seeker in the whole school, if not the whole entire world? Couldn’t he
do something wrong and then hide from his parents until they were
nearly frantic with fear until he popped out and smiled and they forgot
they were angry?

Shit, he was the champ. Bemie should have known.

A footstep by the door.

And a scratching inside.

He grinned and shifted, and took hold of the bag.

Someone turned the lock... turned and lock and walked away. “Hey,”
he said. “Hey, Bemie, it’s me!”

And he pushed the bag aside, and saw the red eyes staring at him.

The candy bars sat in the middle of the table, and Stacey stood as close
as he dared, one eye on Bemie fussing with the logs in the fireplace, the
other on the reward he would win the next time. Had Jeremy been last,
it would have been different because Jerry was okay. But Will was a p-i-g
hog and he didn’t think he could stand sitting here watching that pig
scoff down all that chocolate.

Bemie rose and dusted her hands on the apron she wore around her
waist.

Stacey decided he would win the next one, and let Jerry have the last.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 37

At least that way, Will-the-pig wouldn’t hog it all and make them look
stupid besides.

“Are you ready?” she asked, standing on the hearth.

Jeremy looked toward the stairs that led to the first floor. “But we
can’t,” he said. “We gotta wait for Will.”

“The hell with Will,” Stacey said with a sneer. “He’s got his dumb
candy, how he’s just playing. We oughta let him stay wherever he is all
night.”

“That’s not fair!”

“If that’s the way Will wants it,” Bemie said softly, “then that’s the way
he’ll have it. If he’s not back before we finish the next game, he’ll forfeit
his prize.”

“Yeah!” Stacey said. “Way t’go, Bemie.”

She smiled briefly, and he smiled back. She was really queer, but she
had bigger tits even than his mother, and he didn’t think she knew that
he’d been trying to look down her dress all night. He’d whispered that
to Jerry while they were waiting for Will, and the dip had blushed. He
really had blushed. Stacey figured the kid didn’t know anything about
women, and wasn’t surprised. His old man was the strictest parent in the
world, and wouldn’t even let him look at photography magazines. That
was dumb. That was really and truly dumb.

“So,” he said, “when do we start?”

“Stace...”

“Aw, c’mon, huh? They’re gonna be back soon. We gotta get a move

__ ”

on.

“Stacey’s right,” Bemie said. She reached into the apron pocket, then,
and pulled out something wrapped in white cloth. Slowly, she pulled the
comers aside, and he saw in her palm a massive red jewel. It caught the
dim light and doubled it, seemed to quiver when thunder rumbled
through the room.

“Wow,” he said.

“This,” she said, “was taken from a very rich man. He has the police
looking for it. He’s given them one hour to find it or else.” She smiled
without showing her teeth. “We’re going to play:”

cops and robbers

Stacey knew he had made a mistake. He should have found some place
inside to hide the jewel, but had convinced himself that Jerry would have
found it in less than ten minutes. After all, it was his house, and he knew
all the good places where such a thing could be hidden.

38 Charles L. Grant

But this was silly.

He stood on the patio, the wind tearing at his hair and lashing it in his
face, making him squint, hunching his shoulders, making his arms
tremble as he considered digging a hole in one of the potted plants and
burying it there.

No. Once Jerry knew he’d left the house, that would be the first place
he’d look. And there wasn’t time to dig a hole in the yard because the
ground was still hard and he didn’t have any tools.

Dumb, Parsons, he told himself when the wind turned him around.
Really and truly dumb.

Then a streak of cloud-smothered lightning illuminated the backyard,
and he grinned so hard his cheeks began to ache.

The well. That stupid plaster well Mrs. Kneale had bought last sum¬
mer. They were forbidden to go near it, to touch, even to breathe on it,
which didn’t bother him because he thought it was stupid. What good
was a well when it didn’t go anywhere? All Mr. Kneale had done was
take it out of the station wagon with Jerry and his help, and carried it to
the yard, plunked it down, and got himself a beer to celebrate. Mrs.
Kneale had applauded like they’d moved the stupid damn Empire State
Building, and after that she and Jerry’s father would sit on the patio and
toss pennies at it, making wishes. She’d wanted Stacey to do it once, and
he did because Jerry was his friend, but he’d felt dumb and he made Jerry
swear later he wouldn’t tell a soul.

Then, in August, he’d had an idea.

Mr. Kneale was getting pretty good at pitching the coins in; he could
even do it most times with his eyes closed. So one night, when they were
supposed to have been over at Will’s, they snuck through the hole in the
hedge and moved the well over. Just a few inches, not enough to notice.

Mr. Kneale missed, moved his chair, and recovered his aim.

They moved the well again, back where it was, and sat on the other
side of the hedge in Will’s yard and laughed themselves into hiccups
when they heard the guy swearing.

They managed it twice more, until the night Jerry slipped on the damp
grass and the well landed hard. One side cracked. A small split they didn’t
think anyone would notice.

Mrs. Kneale did, and that stupid Jerry broke the minute she asked him
if they’d been fooling around.

Stupidass Jerry. Him and his stupidass books and his posters and not
even knowing what Bernie looked like without her clothes. Damn, but
they’d gotten into a hell of a lot of trouble, especially when Stacey had

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 39

let slip a fuck-word when his mother grabbed for his arm. Christ, that
had put him in his room for a whole goddamned week.

The well, then. Jerry was still too scared to go near it, and wouldn’t
dream that his old pal still had the nerve.

He hurried off the patio onto the grass, crouched over and running on
his toes, stopping once when lightning put a shadow in front of him and
it took him a moment to realize it was his own. A look back over his
shoulder, the draperies were still closed, and he dove around the side of
the well, out of the wind.

Buried lightning again, and the mutter of thunder, and he whirled
around when he thought he heard something coming through the hedge.

Nothing. It was nothing.

The leaves husked and branches rattled, and grass crawled toward his
legs, and all the houses he could see were perfectly dark. Holes in the
night; mouths of black monsters that ate people after sunset.

“Fuck,” he said into the wind. It made him feel better, because the
wind was getting on his nerves. “Fuck, shit, damn, hell.” He smiled, and
pulled the ruby out of his pocket, lifted his hand to drop it in the well
when he stopped; frowned, and wondered just how stupid dumb Jerry
really was. He just might think of the well, hejust might, and if he looked
inside with a flashlight he’d see it right away and get all the chocolate.
Worse; he’d brag about it to every kid in the school, every day for a
goddamned year. Worse yet, he’d prove he was such a good little boy
that his parents would lift the grounding, and leave Stacey stuck in his
room.

What he had to do then was think like a robber, a crook who was going
to come back real soon and take the loot and run away once the cops
had been by. He nodded to himself, looked back to the toolshed and
knew that was too obvious. If he was going to hide it out here, then, he
would have to put it in the well, but cover it with something. Grass,
maybe some dirt, so the light wouldn’t shine off it.

Suddenly, lightning sheered out of the clouds, ripping a hole in the
night like a sheet tearing in half. He jumped and clutched the jewel to
his stomach, closed his eyes and waited for the thunder.

When it came, cracking the air and smashing over his head, his ears
stoppered, and he yelled, jumped to his feet and stared wide-eyed at the
house.

This was nuts. He was going to fry out here, all for a stupid piece of
chocolate.

Then he put a hand on the plaster lip and looked into the well.

And blinked.

40 Charles L. Grant

The edge only came to his waist, but it looked like it dropped a hundred
miles into the ground. Maybe even a million. Mr. Kneale must’ve dug a
hole under it, to pretend it was real and keep them from playing their
trick on him again. He smiled; it was perfect. And he leaned over, reached
out his hand, and when lightning flared again he could see all the way
to the bottom. To the grass. To the lousy damned grass.

“Well, shit,” he said, and without wasting any more time, he hitched
himself onto the lip and dropped in.

The wind passing over the mouth sounded like hollow trumpets, and
the sides quivered, the peaked roof shook, and the plastic bucket on the
chain rocked alarmingly fast. It was a tight fit, but he had plenty of room
to dig a small hole between his shoes with his fingers, place the jewel
carefully inside and cover it again. Then he waited for the next bolt to
be sure his work couldn’t be seen.

When it came, he saw the water, and couldn’t stop himself from falling
toward the red eyes floating toward him.

This isn’t funny any more, Jeremy thought, but he didn’t have the
nerve to leave the deacon’s bench and complain. Bemie was in the
kitchen again, making something on the stove, rattling pans and banging
spoons and whistling so far off-key the noise scraped his spine like claws
on a blackboard.

This isn’t fun.

He looked over his shoulder, out the window to the yard that flicked
in and out of his vision, white, black, white again and jumping over the
well in the center. He had thoughts, a few minutes ago, that he’d seen
Stacey creeping around there, but when the lightning came again and
there was nothing to see, he changed his mind. Stacey was crazy, but not
crazy enough for that.

His tongue touched his upper lip.

His left foot tapped on the floor.

He looked to the stairwell when he thought he heard Will, then looked
to the back door when he thought he heard Stace.

Then the kitchen door slammed open, and Bemie walked in.

He blinked, and tried to smile, but there was an ice cube settling on
the back of his neck, and it grew when he heard the first spattering of
rain on the window.

Bemie sat in his father’s chair by the fireplace and looked at the
charred logs, raised her head and smiled straight at him. Her face was
in partial shadow, and he could see only one eye, only one part of the
mouth, only a few of her teeth.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 41

P *•

“Are you worried about your friends?”

He nodded, and swallowed because he thought he was going to break
down and cry, and that was the one thing he’d promised himself he’d
never do again. All it ever did was get a slap from his father, or a shout
from his mother—act your age, Jeremy Kneale, you’re not a baby any
more.

“I wouldn’t,” she whispered. “They’re doing just fine.”

“How do you know?” he said, more angrily than he’d intended. “All
you do is make that stupid popcorn. Will is hurt somewhere, I just know
it. And Stacey must be out there in all that rain.” He rose and stood in
front of her, hands clenched at his sides, fighting the burning that flushed
his cheeks. “You don’t care. You just want to get us in trouble again, that’s
all. Our folks are gonna come home, and we’re gonna get in the biggest
trouble in the world.”

Bemie clasped her hands in her lap and watched the logs again, as if
they were burning. “Jeremy, do you know what bog butter is?”

He frowned, looked away, looked back. “What?”

“It’s our game, Jeremy. Surely you haven’t forgotten the third game.
Now answer my question: Have you ever heard of bog butter?”

“I... ” He felt a tear in his right eye, a lump of coal in his throat. “Huh?”

She smiled dreamily, and sighed. “In the old days, long before there
was even a United States, they used to bury people in marshes over in
England. You know what a marsh is?”

He nodded.

The rain slapped at the pane, ran over the edge of the gutter and
poured into the shrubs cringing under the window.

“Well, sometimes, when they dug these people up, they found that the
bodies had oozed a kind of wax over themselves. It looked a little like
butter, I guess, so they called it bog butter.”

“That’s nice,” he said, knowing it sounded stupid, but what else could
he say? His friends were lost in the storm and in the house, and Bernie
was sitting in his father’s chair talking about dead bodies and butter and
god!, he wished she’d shut up so he could talk to her.

“At the time, of course, they didn’t know what has caused it, or why
it was there.”

He edged away, his head ducking, his hips turning before he did. And
when she didn’t seem to notice, he backed up to the staircase, then flung
himself up, racing down the hall to his room on the far end. He checked
under the bed, in his closet, under his desk, in the toy chest. He looked
out the window and saw nothing but the rain.

He ducked into his parents’ room, and looked in everything that could

42 Charles L. Grant

have held Will, and everything that couldn’t, not caring that they’d find
out when they saw the mess he made.

The guest room was just as empty.

“Will?”

The bathroom echoed thunder.

“Will!”

He was sweating now, and he couldn’t stop his fingers from snapping,
couldn’t stop his lips from moving as if he were talking to himself. He
checked the hall closet, but it was locked. He shook the door as hard as
he could, then turned the bolt over and reached in for the string that
snapped on the light.

Something fell against his legs,and he jumped back, yelping, then
scowling at an empty shoebox that had dropped from the high shelf.

When he turned the light on, he saw nothing, not even when he
crammed himself in and pushed everything aside that he could move, or
kick, or butt with his hips.

Will wasn’t there.

He stood in the middle of the hall, turning in a tight circle and yanking
his head away from the lightning.

“Will, where are you?”

In the bathroom, a faucet began dripping.

“Will!"

Downstairs, then, into the living room, the dining room, the coat
closet, the pantry.

He raced through the den, and heard Bernadette still talking about
corpses in old England.

He flung open the front door and stood in the rain, not caring how
wet he was getting, just hoping to catch a glimpse of Stacey returning
with fat Will in tow. He ran around the house and screamed over the
storm into the shrubbery, into the garage, into hedging that whipped at
his arms and drew blood on his cheek.

“Stacey!” A cry more than a shout.

“Will!” Begging more than demanding.

There was no one in the tool shed, no one in the well.

He plunged back inside and stood by the table.

“Bemie.”

She sighed, lightning flared, and the lamp flickered out.

“Bemie, answer me!”

He swung his arm and knocked over the bowl of popcorn. He kicked
the table’s near leg and toppled the glasses of soda. He picked up a
chocolate bar and flung it at the hearth.

Are You Afraid of the Dark? 43

“Bemie, dammit!”

“Now that,” she said, “is one of the things your father objects to. That

kind of language.”

“But—”

“And not paying attention. He said—they all said—none of you pay
the slightest attention to them.” She turned her head; he could see it
moving though he couldn’t see her eyes. “I could see that the first time
I came here. And I could see something else, something rather sad, when
you think about it a bit.”

He shook his head and felt the water scattering across the room. “I
don’t give a damn about them now,” he said, grabbing the cardtable by
its edges and tipping it to the floor. “I want to know what you did with
Will and Stacey!”

“You see, Jeremy, there are some people who just aren’t cut out to be
parents. They haven’t the innate skills, or the temperament for it. Soon
enough, they learn that children aren’t pets, they’re real human beings,
and that’s quite a revelation, don’t you think? That children are human
beings?”

He started to cry. He couldn’t help it. Frustration at her refusal to
respond made him so angry he couldn’t stop the tears, or the way his
legs stiffened as he kicked aside the wreckage and started to walk toward
her.

“You, of course, didn’t help very much,” she said in light scolding.

“Bemie, please!”

“So your father found someone who knew me. And I came to help
them get over their problem.”

He stopped.

He could hear the soft whisper of Bemie’s dress as she pushed out of
the chair; he could hear the moist rattling of her breath in her throat; he
could hear the odd way her feet struck the carpet as she walked over to
meet him.

“Now, do you remember what I said about bog butter, Jeremy?”

He took a deep breath, closed his eyes, and screamed, “I don’t care!”

“Ah, but you should, dear, you should.”

There was lightning, and he gasped.

“They thought, you see, it was a curious little by-product of decompo¬
sition.”

There was thunder, and the lamp flickered.

“It isn’t, you know.”

The lamp steadied, and he saw her, saw her soft silken dress and her

44 Charles L . Grant

soft silken hair and the glistening yellow wax that covered her soft silken
arms.

“It’s protection, my love.”

He backed away, and screamed.

The lamp sizzled and went out.

“It keeps us alive. So we can help those who need us.” She laughed
then, and moved closer. “Now what are you afraid of, dear Jeremy my
love. Why don’t you tell me so I can show you what it’s like.”

Catch Your Death

John Gordon

One of the chief joys for any horror enthusiast lies in discovering a new
writer. On the advice of Rosemary Pardoe, I hunted through the children’s
books section of Foyle’s to find a book entitled Catch Your Death and
Other Ghost Stories crammed in beside books about Fluffy the Bunny
and the like. While the characters in these stories are often adolescents,
there is nothing childish about John Gordon’s fiction. This is one of the
finest collections of horror stories in many years.

John Gordon was born in the North of England, the son of a teacher.
His family moved South in the Depression of the 1930s, and he was
educated at a Grammar School in East Anglia before joining the Navy in
1943. After the war he became a journalist and worked on a number of
newspapers. He is now a full-time writer. Gordon is married and has two
grown-up children. He enjoys music and walking. His books include The
Giant Under the Snow, The House on the Brink, The Ghost on the Hill,
Waterfall Box, The Spitfire Grave, and The Edge of The World, and he
has published many short stories.

“I SEEN IT.”

“Ya never.”

“It were bigger’n me. Bigger’n you. Bigger’n her, an’ all.”

“Bigger’n Sally? She’s only little, your little sister is.”

Ron Stibbard’s head jutted forward. “I’ll give you a crack acrost the
skull if you don’t shut up. It were bigger’n all three on us put together.
It were huge.”

“I should think it was huge, then.” Wayne Spencer had his arms spread
as though he was about to fight or fly; it didn’t matter to him which it
was. He had taken off his anorak and tied the sleeves round his middle
so that it hung behind him like an apron in reverse. “It must have been
huger than anything I ever seen. Huger than anything anybody ever seen,
I reckon. Hi, Miss!”

He spun away, and Ron and Sally watched him barge into backs,

45

46 John Gordon

fronts, shoulders, anything in the way of his elbows as he ran up the
slope of the playground toward the teacher. Miss Birdsall was looking
out to sea across the rooftops, the winter mist in her eyes.

“What’s he going to do?” said Sally and put her hand in her brother’s
coat pocket where he felt it stirring like a little mouse. It said more than
her voice did. She was frightened.

“It don’t matter what he do. We seen it.”

“Hi, Miss.” Wayne’s shout reached them down the slope. “Ron Stibbard
reckon he have seen something in the lane.”

Miss Birdsall’s gaze came slowly back from the smooth roll of the sea
under the mist, crossed the slate roofs, drifted in over the railings and
fluttered to rest on Wayne. “What has he seen?” she said. “And there’s
no need to shout.”

*

It had no effect; they could still hear him. “He have seen a big black
dog. Miss. Bigger’n him himself, and me, both on us together. What do
you reckon. Miss?”

Her smile seemed to have a pale color, something like the blue of her
eyes. “I should think he’s seen a big black dog,” she said. “Did it bite
him?”

“It don’t have to bite him, Miss. Not if it’s Black Shuck. You only have
to see it and you die.”

In the long lane along the cliff the boy’s voice was no more than a
gull’s call. A shadow shifted in the hedge. Brown eyes blinked.

I hang in the hedge, a scatter of shadows. I am dog-shape and pad
these long lanes. I am Death-Bringer.

“I had that liver for me lunch. You know I did, dear.” Mrs. Birdsall
always held a little handkerchief, and now, as she gazed up at her
daughter, she teased it between her fingers. “I warmed it up, just like
you told me, Mary. That and a few veggies, which I done meself.”

“I meant it for supper, Mother. There was enough for both of us.” Mary
Birdsall’s soft voice had no more rise and fall to it than the sea shushing
against the beach at the end of the road. She gazed vacantly into the red
glow of the fire. The little parlor was almost in darkness, and for a long
moment the only sound was the ticking of the big clock on the mantel.
She turned a sigh into a deep breath, but her mother was not deceived.

“You didn’t want me to go hungry, Mary, did you?” The handkerchief
was stretched like a drumskin. “An’ you know very well you left it on the
shelf for me. Why was it there if it wasn’t for me?”

Catch Your Death 47

“There was some cold meat, Mother. And a salad. Surely you saw
them.”

There was a silence in which the handkerchief was pulled from hand
to hand until it nearly tore.

“You did see it. Mother?”

The handkerchief was screwed up suddenly and raised to the comer
of an eye.

“You didn’t eat that, too, did you?”

“It were so little, Mary. It weren’t hardly filling.” Her voice was a whine
from the deep chair by the fireside. “And me legs have been playing me
up so terrible. I can’t hardly move. I’ve had an awful afternoon, awful. I
been feeling to terrible I almost got someone to run up to the school and
fetch you. But I know you don’t like being interrupted, Mary.”

“Mother!” Mary Birdsall took a step nearer the short, plump figure that
reclined in the low chair with both legs resting on a stool. “You know
that’s not true. If you’re really bad you’ve got to send for me.”

The head with the tpusled thin hair was turned away and the screwed-
up handkerchief was pressed to the base of the nose. “I’m a martyr to me
legs, Mary. You know I am. I was just starting the washing-up when it
struck. I was right against the kitchen sink, and I had to cling there for I
don’t know how long. How I ever got back into this room I shall never
know.”

“How are you now. Mother?” Mary Birdsall put the bag she was
carrying down on the floor and reached for the free hand that her mother
had conveniently left lying limply on the chair arm. “Are you better?”

The hand, surprisingly thin and damp, clutched feverishly at hers. “I
can manage. You don’t need to worry about me, dear.” In the dim light
of the dying fire, the liquid in her eyes glowed bravely. “I ain’t intending
to go just yet. I think I’ve got a few years left to me.”

“Of course you have. Mother.”

Quite suddenly, energetically, old Mrs. Birdsall was elbowing herself
upright. The gleam of her eyes had caught sight of Mary’s shopping-bag.

“So you got something for us after all, did you, Mary? I knew that liver
wasn’t for supper. There weren’t hardly enough. What did you get?”

Mary Birdsall’s mild eyes glazed at the wrinkled face as the stooped
figure got to its feet.

“There’s nothing wrong with your legs, now. Mother.”

“I been resting them. They’ll be all right for a minute. What was it you
fetched?”

“I came straight from school. I haven’t been to the shop.” Mary picked
up the bag and with the first precise action she had made since coming

48 John Gordon

into the room, she began placing its contents on the table. “Schoolbooks,
Mother. I’ve got some marking to do tonight.”

“What’s the use o’ them?” The old mouth turned down at the comers
and the rounded shoulders swung away from her daughter as Mrs.
Birdsall shuffled toward the door in the comer.

“If you get the washing-up done. Mother, I’ll just go and get something
from the shop.”

“I got to pay a call.”

Mary Birdsall heard the bathroom latch rattle and the door shut.

“Ron.” Sally had to take a step and a half to each stride of her brother’s
to keep up with him. “It isn’t true what he said about our dog, is it?”

She spoke very carefully because she had a lisp, so he knew what she
was saying before she had finished, but even then she had to wait several
paces before he replied.

“It ain’t our dog.”

“Well it nearly is. It comes to see us, and it don’t bark.”

“You heard what Miss said. She said Black Shuck were just a story, so
it can’t be Black Shuck or we’d be dead, both of us.”

“We even patted it.” Her voice faded to a whisper as the thought
widened her eyes. He felt her hand reach into his anorak pocket and he
put his own hand in beside it. She gripped his fingers.

“You got nothing to worry about, Sally,” he said, but he brought them
both to a halt in the center of the lane and they turned to look back. They
could see the school against the gray sky, but most of the village was
hidden in the dip of the cliffs. “I was just wonderin’,” he said, “if Wayne
was tagging along behind us.” The tarmac strip of the lane, wet with the
mist creeping in from the sea, gleamed emptily. “But there ain’t a smell
of him. I might have known he’d be chicken.”

“I’m scared.” Her voice was still very small. “I don’t want to be dead.”

The cliffs were not high and the sound of the waves reached them,
clapping down on the beach like falling gravestones. His courage almost
flew from him and his grip on her hand tightened so hard she was
startled. To disguise it he began to mn, tugging her with him, leaving
the village behind.

I am unseen. My black tongue lolls like winter leaves. That pebble-glint
is my eye, that bent stick my leg. Death is never far.

It is centuries since I leapt for the shore across ice-gleam of oar blades
and through hail hiss in sea spume. Icicles rattled in my pelt as I leapt,

i

first foot on this shore.

Catch Your Death 49

The tang of the sharp still touches my tongue, and I hear the song they
sang as fierce forks of flame thrust through thatch and wooden walls.
Then they bawled in their beer, bragged of battle; blades shone as they
shouted and haled their hell-hound. I ran on before them, and death
followed my swift feet; of that their sharp swords made sure.

The two women in the shop watched Mary Birdsall as she went out.
“I know where she’s off to now,” said one, and they both laughed.

Behind the counter, Mrs. Groves said, “Well you can’t blame her, not
with a mother like that. I never see that old woman but what she’s
grumbling about this or complaining about that.”

“I never do see her nowadays,” said the woman with the wire basket
lifting her purchases from it and putting them on the counter. “Not that
I want to. But they do say she have bad legs and can’t get about.”

“Bad legs!” The shopkeeper knew better. “I’ll tell you one thing, Mrs.
Spencer, her legs is good enough to get up here every single afternoon.”
She nodded and pursed her lips. “No sooner does that school bell go to
call the children in after dinner than she comes trotting up the road as
fast as you like.” -•

“She don’t!” But Mrs. Spencer believed it. “Where do she go?”

“Here, of course. She sneaks in here and closes the door ever so softly
as though Mary could hear her. That’s what she’s afraid of; Mary finding
out. And that’s why she waits until Mary’s safely back in school. And you
know why?”

“No I don’t, Mrs. Groves.” The tins and packets from the wire basket
were laid out between them waiting to be rung up on the till. “I’ve no
idea.”

“Chocolate.” Mrs. Groves raised her eyebrows and her chin and
watched through her glasses until the word had made its impact.
“Chocolate. Mars Bars. Marathons. Galaxies. It don’t matter to her what
they are. ‘Give me one o’ them,’ she say, and point to it. And then she
digs in her purse and thinks a bit, and says, ‘And one o’ them others. I’m
that starved,’ she say, ‘Mary hardly left me nothin.’”

“Well, you surprise me. My Wayne say she’s ever so kind, and so do
all the children. I never knew Mary Birdsall was like that.”

“She’s not. Oh no.” Mrs. Groves had pursed her lips again and was
shaking her head. “You know as well as I do, Mrs. Spencer, that Mary is
generous to a fault. There ain’t a kinder person in the whole village. And
I am the one who should know best of all. The food she buys here you
would not believe.”

“Well, it can’t be for herself. She’s hardly got any flesh on her.” Mrs.

50 John Gordon

Spencer was looking out through the shop window, a faint smile on her
mouth and her eyes glinting with interest at what she saw. “There she
goes now; what did I tell you?”

The shopkeeper leaned over the counter to look around a pile of tins.
“It’s the same every time. She did not have to speak loudly because her
head was very close to Mrs. Spencer’s. “It’s a wonder people don’t start
talking.”

“They do say,” Mrs. Spencer began and then broke off as the two
women watched Mary hesitate in front of the little bank at the comer. A
light glowed in the com merchant’s office above it, but the bank’s own
windows were shuttered. “There she goes.” They saw Mary step across
the pavement and push open the door. “And that bank’s supposed to be
closed,” said Mrs. Spencer, and both women laughed. “Closed to every¬
body but Mary Birdsall, that is.”

“Well, you can’t blame her.”

“You’ve got to take your pleasures when you can and wherever you
can, but a bank’s a funny place for it.” They laughed again. “Not that
Mary minds, I dare say. He ain’t a bad looking feller for a bank manager.”

“They won’t have long,” said the shopkeeper. “She’ll have to get home
with that ham for her mother’s tea.”

“I’d give her ham, the way she’s treated that girl. They’d be married
now if it wasn’t for that old woman. Made such a fuss when Mary
mentioned it.”

The shopkeeper was nodding her head, agreeing. “Wasn’t going to be
left on her own, wasn’t going to move, didn’t want anybody else in the
house. I know what I’d have told her.”

“But you’re not Mary, Mrs. Groves.”

“Indeed I am not.”

They watched through the window as the bank door opened and the
teacher disappeared inside.

“Poor Mary,” said Mrs. Spencer. “She can’t stand up to her mother.
Never could.”

In the lane the two children stopped running.

“It ain’t no good,” said Ron. “He ain’t coming, not today.”

“I don’t mind,” said Sally.

“You ain’t afraid of dyin’ are you?”

“Not after what Miss Mary Birdsall said, I ain’t. It was that Wayne. He
made me frit.”

Ron gave her hand a jerk of annoyance and imitated her lisp. “Miss
Mary Birdsall. You don’t say a teacher’s whole name when you talk about
her. She’s just Miss.”

Catch Your Death 51

“But I like Miss Mary Birdsall. She ain’t very happy.”

“She ain’t supposed to be happy, is she? She’s a teacher.”

“She have sad eyes. She would cry if anything was to happen to us.”

“I should think everybody would.” They stood together, hand in hand,
and looked out over the low cliff. “They Wouldn’t like it if two kids was
to die.”

They listened to the mournful suck of the sea below and for a moment
felt the lonely luxury of slipping out of the world.

“I seen her crying once, Ron. She come out of her house and she could
hardly see me her eyes was so brimful. And you know what she done?”

“How do I know? I wasn’t there was I?”

“She picked me up and kissed me. She almost squeezed the life out of
me. Why do you reckon she done that when she was crying?” Ron
shrugged and did not answer. “Anyway, that’s why I like Miss Mary
Birdsall.”

Her brother listened for a few seconds to the dull clap of the waves
then said, “Anyway she put that Wayne in his place when he was going
on about Old Shuck didn’t she? She say that black dogs sometimes bring
good luck. If they’re ghosts, that is.”

“Our dog ain’t a ghost, though.”

I listen. In the field’s dark furrows my pelt is invisible. Their fingers
have felt my coat and tugged at my neck. They have dealt with the
Death-Dealer and there is no going back.

A single light in a green shade shone over his desk in the back, but
they stood at a little distance and in shadow near the counter where all
day he had been counting money to and fro through the brass grille.

“For ever, Mary? Does this go on for ever?” He had drawn away from
her, and his hand rested on the counter as though waiting for some
document in a transaction. “Our lives are running away.”

She knew that. Daily, in the mirror, she had seen the dark shadow
under her eyes increasing and the edge of her lips beginning to blur with
tiny wrinkles. “Even my clothes.” Her thoughts burst into words that were
almost a cry. “Look at me. Jumper and skirt. Every day the same. Oh!”

“Mary,” he said. At one time, when he spoke as softly as now, he would
have reached for her and, clinging together, they would have ridden out
the anguish. But this time he had made no move. “She’s got to let you
go. You’ve got to leave her.”

I can t!

He was a quiet man. The thin brown face, handsome at most times.

52 John Gordon

was hollowed now into angular shapes. “She uses you. She’s taking your
life away, can’t you see that?”

“If only you could begin to like her.”

He drew in his breath. “She won’t even see me, Mary. How many more
times do we try?”

“But...” And then she looked down. They had each rested a hand
on the counter, but their fingers were curled, not touching. There was a
space of polished wood between them and she could not cross it. All she
could do was slide her hand back. She did so and turned away. “She
relies on me. I can’t leave her.”

Seen through the moisture of her eyes the floor was uncertain and she
almost stumbled. He saw the awkwardness in her, but desperation gave
him grim cruelty and he let her open the door and go out without calling
her back.

Mrs. Groves pressed the keys on her cash register and watched the
little electronic figures flicker, doing her sums for her. It’s a boon, she
thought for the millionth time; I would have though this was magic when
I was at school.

“There she goes.” Mrs. Spencer had seen Mary coming out of the bank,
and was simpering slyly at the thought of what had been happening
inside. “That never took long.”

Mrs. Groves took her eyes from the magic figures. “She do have her
head bowed low, don’t she?”

Mary went by as though rain was beating into her face, and the smile
faded on Mrs. Spencer’s lips. “She’s crying, that’s what she’s doing. What
have he said to her? What have he done?”

They watched her go by without being properly able to glimpse her
face, then the shopkeeper said, “Well at least she’s going home and not
the other way.”

“What do you mean, Mrs. Groves?”

“I’ve seen that girl looking so miserable at times,” Mrs. Groves was
shaking her head, “that when she wanders down toward the sea I wonder
whether she isn’t going to do something really silly.”

The lane along the cliff bent away out of sight, and the thin sea mist
put cold hands to their cheeks and foreheads.

“There ain’t much point in going no further,” said Ron. “He ain’t
coming to see us today.” His sister’s fingers lay quite still inside his hand
in his pocket, and for some time she had walked steadily in silence. He
glanced sideways and saw that her face was serious. Her small legs must

Catch Your Death 53

be getting tired. “I reckon we’ve gone far enough, Sally. Time we went
back.”

“I was thinking about Miss Mary Birdsall,” she said.

Her lisp made him tighten his fingers over hers. He wanted to protect
her. “What about her?” he said.

“She’s so sad I wondered if we could do something to cheer her up.”

“What, for instance?”

Her little shoulders rose and fell in a quick shrug. “I don’t know.”

“Come on, we’ve got to get back.” He turned in the road and the faint
breeze pushed droplets into his face that thickened and made him blink
just as Sally gripped his hand, tugged it from his pocket and began to
drag him forward.

“There he is!” she cried. “I knew he’d come for us.”

They had descended a slope to where the clifftop almost touched the
beach. Now, as they looked up, they saw the shape on the skyline.

I stand between dull sea silver and the black bank. They see me. Their
home hearth is at my back. The one track brings them to my muzzle.

Sally slipped his hand and ran forward. He had not realized the dog
was so large. She had to reach above her head to put her arms around
its neck.

“He’s wet,” she said. “He’s ever so wet on my face. Look.” She turned
toward him, rubbing her cheeks in the dog’s pelt to pick up the beads of
mist hanging there. Her face shone in the pale light as she laughed, and
the dog lowered its mask to be level with her, but kept its eyes on the
boy.

Her brother’s footsteps faltered and she called out, “Hurry up, Ron,
we’ve got to do something.”

“What?” He came forward slowly and stood in front of them. The dog’s
breath smoked across his sister’s face, and he wanted to reach forward
and coax her fingers from the long hair of its neck, but the brown eyes
set deep in the black skull made him, for the first time, afraid. “What
have we got to do?”

“Get hold of him, Ron, like I am.” She saw him hesitate. “You don’t
have to be frightened.”

Shame at being less daring than his sister made him put his hand
forward and touch the dog between the ears. He felt the heavy bone and
dug his fingers into the thick hair behind its head.

“It’s cold,” he said. “Cold all the way inside.”

She nodded. Her face was gleaming. “Do you know what I think we

54 John Gordon

should do?” she asked. He shook his head. “I think we should take the
dog to see Miss Maty Birdsall.”

The dog’s tongue lolled over its black lips and its teeth showed, but it
was docile between them and Ron’s courage returned.

“It could get warm beside her fire,” he said. “She’d like that.” But it
was the thought of walking through the village street and Wayne Spencer
seeing him with the big black shape at his side that was strongest in his
mind.

The dog went with them. Sally was no taller than its head but she
clung to the hair of its shoulder as though at a tug she could force it to
go in any direction she demanded. And all the time she chattered.

“Miss Mary Birdsall will be ever so pleased, Ron. It will make her
happy. I know it will. She might be able to keep it.” She leant forward
as she walked, and looked into its face. “Would you like that? She’ll give
you a name, I reckon, if you haven’t got one. You’d like a name, I expect.”

Names made her brother uncomfortable. “Why don’t you be quiet?”
he said.

Night was coming on fast, and as they entered the village the mist
became a drizzle which dissolved the outlines of the houses. Suddenly
he no longer wanted to be with the dog that padded between them. “Let
it go,” he said. “Send it back.”

“No!” She raised her voice. “I like him. He’s Old Shuck.”

“Don’t say that!” He had thrust his head forward, turning to say more,
but his words were choked off as the dog stopped suddenly and raised
its head.

It was then that they heard the footsteps. Coming along the street, one
hand holding her coat collar closed against the drizzle, was the teacher.

Sally tugged at the dog and tried to urge it forward. “Miss!” she called
out. “Miss Mary Birdsall!”

Mary heard her just as she was about to turn into the gateway of her
cottage. She paused, frowning slightly, not wanting her thoughts to be
disturbed, but Sally called again and she took her hand from the latch.

“Sally,” she said, surprised to see the two children. “And Ron Stibbard.
You’re soaking, the pair of you. You’d better get home and get those wet
things off.”

At the sound of her voice the dog moved forward and they went with
it to stand in front of her. She looked down at them and they saw that
the blue of her eyes seemed to have widened with the moisture on her
face.

“Miss,” said Sally, and fell silent, suddenly shy.

Ron had to speak. “We thought we’d like to give you something,” he

Catch Your Death 55

said in a rush, and was going to go on, but the cottage door opened and
distracted them.

“Mary!” The voice was peevish. “What you doing standing out there
with them kids? I been waiting ages.”

“Just a minute, Mother. They want to tell me something.”

“Can’t you see them in the morning? If I stand here any longer I’ll catch
me death.” She turned her back and waddled inside.

It was then, with their hands resting on its back, that they felt the dog’s
pelt roughen. They glanced quickly down and saw its head lowered as
though it was about to charge. They clenched their fingers in its stiff,
black hair, half afraid it would turn on them, but it moved forward and
slid easily from their grasp.

They watched it pad through the garden to the open door, push it
wider as though it already belonged there, and disappear into the
shadows inside. They were listening for a shriek of alarm or anger from
the old woman but no sound came, and Mary’s voice made them turn
toward her, away from the blank doorway.

“You were going to tell me something,” she said, and waited for an
answer.

♦

“It was only about the dog,” said Ron.

“What dog?”

He opened his mouth to speak, but as he looked directly into her eyes
he saw that she did not know what he meant. The huge dog had stood
between them but she had not seen it.

It was Sally’s lisp that broke the silence. “Miss Mary Birdsall,” she said.

Mary could not prevent herself smiling at the small, solemn face
turned up toward her. “Yes?” she said.

“We brought him along to see you so you wouldn’t be sad.”

“Who?”

“Old Shuck,” said Sally.

Her brother was embarrassed and jerked at her hand to silence her.
“It’s nothing. Miss,” he said, and began to retreat, pulling Sally with him.

Mary watched them turn away slowly and then, free of her, suddenly
break into a run and disappear along the road, hand in hand.

I stand still in the room. Far outside, footsteps flee. They need not fear.
I deal death where I will. I lift my muzzle and am door height. Fire-coal
falls and flares, and in the heat of the hearth the old one watches. She
sees. My pelt steams. In her face, fear flickers and I come closer. She feels
my breath in her face, fails to fight free, and in a gasp is gone.

Dinner Party

Gardner Dozois

Gardner Dozois was born in 1947 in Salem, Massachusetts, where he
grew up ice-skating on Gallows Hill Now a resident of Philadelphia,
Dozois is the author or editor of sixteen books, including the novel
Strangers, and The Visible Man, a collection of his short fiction. He also
edits the annual series, The Year’s Best Science Fiction. His short fiction
has appeared in Playboy, Penthouse, Omni, and a great many science
fiction magazines and anthologies. His critical work has appeared in
Writer’s Digest, Starship, Thrust, Science Fiction Chronicle, Writing
and Selling Science Fiction, and Science Fiction Writers, and he is the
author of the critical chapbook, The Fiction of James Tiptree, Jr. His
forthcoming books include The Year’s Best Science Fiction, Second
Annual Collection for Bluejay Books and a series of anthologies in
collaboration with Jack Dann for Ace Books: Magicats, Mermaids,
Bestiary, Sorcerers, and Demons.

Dozois often writes in collaboration with one or both of his friends Jack
Dann and Michael Swanwick. A story by the three of them, “Touring,”
was featured in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series X; one critic judged
it to be the best story ever published in this series. However, Gardner
Dozois can do quite well on his own, as this cheerful tale demonstrates.

It had been cold all that afternoon. When they picked Hassmann up at
the gate that evening it was worse than cold—it was freezing.

The gate guard let Hassmann wait inside the guard booth, although
that was technically against regulations, and he might have caught hell
for it if the Officer of the Day had come by. But it was colder than a
witch’s tit outside, as the guard put it, and he knew Hassmann slightly,
and liked him, even though he was RA and Hassmann was National
Guard, and he thought that most NGs were chickenshit. But he liked
Hassmann. Hassmann was a good kid.

They huddled inside the guard booth, sharing a cigarette, talking
desultorily about baseball and women, about a court-martial in the gate

57

58 Gardner Dozois

guard’s battalion, about the upcoming ATTs and MOS tests, about the
scarcity of promotion slots for corporals and 5s. They carefully did not
talk about the incident last weekend on the campus in Morgantown,
although it had been all over the papers and the TV and had been talked
about all over post. They also didn’t talk about where Hassmann was
going tonight—allowed offbase at a time when almost everyone else’s
passes had been pulled—although rumors about that had spread through
the grapevine with telegraphic speed since Hassmann’s interview with
Captain Simes early that afternoon. Most especially, most emphatically,
they did not talk about what everyone knew but hesitated to admit even
in whispers: that by this time next month, they would probably be at
war.

The gate guard was telling some long, rambling anecdote about
breaking up a fight down behind the Armor mess hall when he looked
out beyond Hassmann’s shoulder and fell silent, his face changing. “This
looks like your ride heah, Jackson,” he said, quietly, after a pause.

Hassmann watched the car sweep in off the road and stop before the
gate; it was a big black Caddy, the post floodlights gleaming from a crust
of ice over polished steel and chrome. “Yeah,” Hassmann said. His throat
had suddenly turned dry, and his tongue bulked enormously in his
mouth. He ground the cigarette butt out against the wall. The guard
opened the door of the booth to let him out. The cold seized him with
his first step outside, seized him and shook him like a dog shaking a rat.
“Cover your ass,” the gate guard said suddenly from the booth behind
him. “Remember—cover your own ass, you heah?” Hassmann nodded,
without looking around, without much conviction. The guard grunted,
and slid the booth door closed.

Hassmann was alone.

He began to trot toward the car, slipping on a patch of ice, recovering
easily. Hoarfrost glistened everywhere, over everything, and the stars
were out in their chill armies, like the million icy eyes of God. The cold
air was like ice in his lungs, and his breath steamed in white tatters
around him. The driver of the car had the right front door half open,
waiting for him, but Hassmann—seeing that the man had a woman with
him, and feeling a surge of revulsion at the thought of sitting pressed
close to the couple in the front—opened the rear door instead and slipped
into the back seat. After a moment, the driver shrugged and closed the
front door. Hassmann closed the rear door too, automatically pushed
down the little button that locked it, instantly embarrassed that he had
done so. After the double thunk of the doors closing and the sharp click
of the lock, there was nothing but a smothering silence.

Dinner Party 59

The driver turned around in his seat, resting his arm on the top of the
seatback, staring at Hassmann. In the dark, it was hard to make out his
features, but he was a big, beefy man, and Hassmann could see the
reptilian glint of light from thick, horn-rimmed glasses. The woman was
still facing forward, only casting a quick, furtive glance back at him, and
then turning her head away again. Even in this half-light, Hassmann
could see the stiffness of her shoulders, the taut way she held her neck.
When the silence had become more than uncomfortable, Hassmann
stammered, “Sir, I’m—sir, PFC Hassmann, sir-”

The driver shifted his weight in the front seat. Leather creaked and
moaned. “Glad to meet you, son,” he said. “Yes, very glad—a pleasure,
yes, a pleasure.” There was a forced joviality in his voice, a note of
strained, dangerous cordiality that Hassmann decided he had better not
try to argue with.

“Glad to meet you, too, sir,” Hassmann croaked.

“Thank you, son,” the man said. Leather groaned again as he extended
his hand into the back.seat. Hassmann shook it briefly, released it—the
man’s hand had been damp and flabby, like a rubber glove full of
oatmeal. “I’m Dr. Wilkins,” the man said. “And this is my wife, Fran.” His
wife did not acknowledge the introduction, continuing to stare stonily
straight ahead. “Manners,” Dr. Wilkins said in a soft, cottony voice,
almost a whisper. “Manners!” Mrs. Wilkins jumped as if she had been
slapped, and then dully muttered, “Charmed,” still not turning to look
at Hassmann.

Dr. Wilkins stared at his wife for a moment, then turned to look at
Hassmann again; his glasses were dully gleaming blank circles, like
opaque portholes. “What’s your Christian name, son?”

Hassmann shifted uneasily in his seat. After a moment’s hesitation—as
though to speak his name would be to give the other man power over
him—he said, “James, sir. James Hassmann.”

“I’ll call you Jim, then,” Dr. Wilkins said. It was a statement of fact—he
was not asking permission; nor was there any question that Hassmann
would be expected to continue to call him “Dr. Wilkins,” however free
the older man made himself with Hassmann’s “Christian name.” Or “sir,”
Hassmann thought with a quick flash of resentment, you could hardly
go wrong calling him “sir.” Hassmann had been in the Army long enough
to know that it was impossible to say “sir” too many times when you were
talking to a man like this; work it in a hundred times per sentence, they’d
like it just fine.

Dr. Wilkins was still staring reflectively at him, as if he expected some
sort of response, an expression of gratitude for the fine democratic spirit

60 Gardner Dozois

he was showing, perhaps . . . but Hassmann said nothing. Dr. Wilkins
grunted. “Well, then—Jim,” he said. “You like continental cuisine?”

“I—I’m not sure, sir,” Hassmann said. He could feel his face flushing
with embarrassment in the close darkness of the cab. “I’m not sure I know
what it is.”

Dr. Wilkins made a noise that was not quite a snort—a long, slow,
resigned exhaling of air through the nose. “What kind of food do you like
to eat at home?”

“Well, sir, the usual king of thing, I guess. Nothing special.”

“What kind of things?” Dr. Wilkins said with heavy, elaborated pa¬
tience.

“Oh—spaghetti, meat loaf. Sometimes fried chicken, or cold cuts. We
had TV dinners a lot.” Dr. Wilkins was staring at him; it was too dark to
make out his expression with any kind of certainty, but he seemed to be
staring blankly, incredulously, as if he couldn’t believe what he was
hearing. “Sometimes my mother’d make, you know, a roast for Sunday
or something, but she didn’t like to cook anything fancy like that.”

This time Dr. Wilkins did snort, a sharp, impatient sound. “Adeo in
teneris consuescere multum est,” he said in a loud, portentous voice, and
shook his head. Hassmann felt his face burning again; he had no idea
what Dr. Wilkins had said, but there was no mistaking the scorn behind
the words. “That’s Virgil,” Dr. Wilkins said contemptuously, peering
significantly at Hassmann. “You know Virgil?”

“Sir?” Hassmann said.

“Never mind,” Dr. Wilkins muttered. After a heavy pause, he said,
“This restaurant we’re taking you to tonight has a three-star Michelin
rating, one of the few places east of the Mississippi River that does,
outside of New York City. I don’t suppose that means anything to you,
either, does it?”

“No, sir,” Hassmann said stiffly. “I’m afraid it doesn’t, sir.”

Dr. Wilkins snorted again. Hassmann saw that Mrs. Wilkins was
watching him in the rear view mirror, but as soon as their eyes met, she
turned her face away.

“Well, son,” Dr. Wilkins was saying, “I’ll tell you one thing those three
Michelin stars mean: they mean that tonight you’re going to get the best
damn meal you ever had.” He sniffed derisively. “Maybe the best damn
meal you’ll ever have. Do you understand that ... Jim?”

“Yes, sir,” Hassmann said. Out of the comer of his eye, he could see
that Mrs. Wilkins was watching him in the rear view mirror again. Every
time she thought that his attention was elsewhere, she would stare at
him with terrible fixed intensity; she would look away when he met her

Dinner Party 61

eyes in the mirror, but a moment later, as soon as he glanced away, she
would be staring at him again, as though she couldn’t keep her eyes off
him, as though he were something loathsome and at the same time
almost hypnotically fascinating, like a snake or a venomous insect.

“I don’t expect you to appreciate the finer points,” Dr. Wilkins said,
“we can thank the way kids are brought up today for that, but I do expect
you to appreciate that what you’re getting tonight is a very fine meal,
one of the finest meals money can buy, not some slop from McDonald’s.”

“Yes, sir, I do, sir,” Hassmann said. Dr. Wilkins made ahumpfing noise,
not sounding entirely mollified, so Hassmann added, “It sounds great,
sir. I’m really looking forward to it. Thank you, sir.” He kept his face
blank and his voice level, but his jaw ached with tension. He hated being
dressed down like this, he hated it. His fingers were turning white where
they were gripping the edge of the seat.

Dr. Wilkins stared at him for a moment longer, then sighed and turned
back to the wheel; they slid away into the darkness with a smooth surge
of acceleration.

They coasted back down the hill, turned right. Here the road ran
parallel to the tall cyclone fence that surrounded the base; behind the
iron mesh, behind the winter-striped skeletons of trees, Hassmann could
see the high, cinder-bed roofs of the Infantry barracks, a huge water
tower—it had the slogan RE-UP ARMY stenciled on its sides, visible for
miles in the daytime—and the gaunt silhouette of a derrick, peaking up
over the fence from the Engineer motor pool like the neck of some
fantastic metal giraffe. The base dwindled behind them to a table-top
miniature, to a scene the size of a landscape inside a tiny glass snowball,
and then it was gone, and there was nothing but the stuffy interior of the
car, the pale glow of the instruments on the dashboard, dark masses of
trees rushing by on either side. Hassmann was sweating heavily, in spite
of the cold, and the upholstery was sticky under his hands.

There was a faint but persistent scent of patchouli in the car—cutting
across the new-car smell of the upholstery and the tobacco-and-English-
Leather smell of Dr. Wilkins—that must be Mrs. Wilkins’ perfume; it was
a heavy, oversweet smell that reminded Hassmann of the room in the
cancer hospital where his aunt had died. He longed to roll down the
window, let the cold night air into the stuffy car, but he didn’t quite dare
to do it without asking Dr. Wilkins’ permission, and that was something
he wouldn’t do. He was beginning to get a headache, a bright needle of
pain that probed in alongside his eyeball like a stiff wire, and his stomach
was sick and knotted with tension. Abruptly it was too much for him,
and he found himself blinking back sudden tears of frustration and rage.

62 Gardner Dozois

all the resentment and chagrin he felt rising up in his throat like bile.
Why did he have to do this? Why did they have to pick on him? Why
couldn’t they just leave him alone? He had said as much in Captain Simes’
office this afternoon, blurting out, “I don’t want to do it! Do I have to go,
sir?” And Captain Simes had studied him with jaundiced eye for a
moment before replying, “Officially, no. The regulations say we can’t
make you. Unofficially, though, I can tell you that Dr. Wilkins is a very
important man in this state, and with things as tense as they are
politically, you can expect some very serious smoke to be brought down
on your ass if you don’t do everything you can to keep him happy, short
of dropping your drawers and bending over.” And then Simes had leered
at him with his eroded, prematurely old face and said, “And, hell, soldier,
comes right down to it, maybe you even ought to take that under
advisement....”

They drifted past a weathered wooden bam that was covered with
faded old Clabber Girl and Jesus Saves signs, past a dilapidated farm¬
house where one light was burning in an upstairs window. There was an
automobile up on blocks in the snow-covered front yard, its engine
hanging suspended from a rope thrown over a tree branch. Scattered
automobile parts made hummocks in the snow, as if small dead animals
were buried there. They turned past a bullet-riddled highway sign and
onto an old state road that wound down out of the foothill country. The
car began to pick up speed, swaying slightly on its suspension.

“You come from around here, Jim?” Dr. Wilkins said.

“No, sir,” Hassmann said. Thank God! he added silently to himself.
Evidently he had been unable to keep his feelings out of his voice, because
Dr. Wilkins glanced quizzically at him in the rear view mirror. Quickly,
Hassmann added, “I was born in Massachusetts, sir. A small town near
Springfield.”

“That so?” Dr. Wilkins said, without interest. “Gets pretty cold up there
too in the winter, doesn’t it? So at least you’re used to this kind of
weather, right?”

“That’s right, sir,” Hassmann said leadenly. “It gets pretty cold there,
too.”

Dr. Wilkins grunted. Even he seemed to realize that his attempt at
small talk had been a dismal failure, for he lapsed into a sodden silence.
He pressed down harder on the accelerator, and the dark winter coun¬
tryside began to blur by outside the windows. Now that they had stopped
talking, there was no sound except for the whine of the tires on macadam
or their snaredrum rattle on patches of gravel.

Hassmann rubbed his sweating palms against the slick upholstery.

Dinner Party 63

Somehow he knew that Mrs. Wilkins was watching him again, although
it was too dark to see her eyes in the mirror any more. Occasionally the
lights of an oncoming car would turn the inside of the windshield into a
reflective surface, and he would be able to see her plainly for a second,
a thin-faced woman with tightly pursed lips, her hands clenched together
in her lap, staring rigidly straight ahead of her. Then the light would fade
and her image would disappear, and only then, in the darkness, would
he begin to feel her eyes watching him again, as though she were only
able to see him in the dark....

They were going faster and faster now, careening down the old state
road like a moonshiner on a delivery run with the Alcohol Tax agents on
his tail, and Hassmann was beginning to be afraid, although he did his
best to sit still and look imperturbable. The old roadbed was only
indifferently maintained, and every bump rattled their teeth in spite of
the Caddy’s heavy-duty shocks; once Hassmann was bounced high
enough to bang his head on the roof, and the car was beginning to sway
ominously from side to side. Fortunately, they were on a level stretch of
road with no oncoming traffic with they hit the patch of ice. For a moment
or two the Caddy was all over the road, skidding and fishtailing wildly,
its brakes screaming and its tires throwing up clouds of black smoke, and
then slowly, painfully, Dr. Wilkins brought the big car back under
control. They never came to a complete stop, but they had slowed down
to about fifteen miles per hour by the time Dr. Wilkins could wrestle them
back into their own lane, and you could smell burned rubber even inside
the closed cab.

No one spoke; Mrs. Wilkins had not even moved, except to steady
herself against the dashboard with one hand, an almost dainty motion.
Slowly, almost involuntarily. Dr. Wilkins raised his head to look at
Hassmann in the rear view mirror. Almost lost it, didn’t you, old man?
Hassmann thought, staring impassively back at him, and after a moment
Dr. Wilkins looked shakily away. They began slowly to pick up speed
again, wobbling slightly, although Dr. Wilkins was careful to keep them
under fifty this time. This compulsive speeding, obviously pushing
himself to or beyond the edge of his driving ability, was the first real
indication of strain or tension that Dr. Wilkins had allowed to escape
from behind his smooth, hard-lacquered facade, and Hassmann greeted
it with interest and a certain degree of vindictiveness.

A few minutes more brought them out of the hills. They slowed down
to rattle across a small chain-link bridge over a frozen river. A tank was
parked to one side of the road, near the bridge entrance, its hatch open
for ventilation, gray smoke panting from its exhaust and rising straight

64 Gardner Dozois

up into the cold air. A soldier in a steel helmet popped his head up out
of the driver’s hatch and watched them as they passed. They weren’t
putting up roadblocks and regulating civilian traffic yet, Hassmann
thought, in spite of the recent wave of terrorism, but it obviously wasn’t
going to be too much longer before they were. There was a small town
on the other side of the bridge, half-a-dozen buildings clustered around
a crossroads. Political graffiti had been spray-painted on several of the
buildings, particularly on the blank-faced side-wall of a boarded-up gas
station: YANKEES GO HOME ... FEDS OUT OF WEST VIRGINIA NOW
.. . SECESSION, NOT RECESSION . .. FUCK THE UNION ... A sloppy,
half-hearted attempt to obliterate the graffiti had been made, and only
a few letters of each slogan remained, but Hassmann had seen them often
enough elsewhere to have little difficulty reconstructing them. The
restaurant was a mile beyond the town, a large stone-and-timber build¬
ing that had once been a grinding mill—now hidden spotlights splashed
the ivy-covered walls with pastel lights, and the big wooden waterwheel
was sheathed in glistening ice.

There was a network newsvan parked in front of the restaurant, and
Dr. Wilkins, who had been anxiously checking his watch on the last
stretch from town, grunted in satisfaction when he saw it. As they pulled
up, a news crew with a minicam unit climbed out of the van and took
up position in front of the restaurant steps. Other reporters got out of
their parked cars—pinching out unfinished cigarettes and carefully
tucking them away—and began to saunter over as well, some of them
slapping themselves on the arms and joking with one another about the
cold in low, rapid voices. Hassmann heard one of the reporters laugh,
the sound carrying clearly on the cold winter air.

Dr. Wilkins switched off the ignition, and they all sat motionless and
silent for a moment, listening to the metallic ticking noises the engine
made as it cooled. Then, with forced brightness. Dr. Wilkins said, “Well,
we’re here! Everybody out!” Mrs. Wilkins ignored him. She was staring
out at the gathering knot of reporters, and for the first time she seemed
shaken, her icy composure broken. “Frank,” she said in an unsteady
voice, “I—Frank, I just can’t, I can’t face them, I can’t—” She was
trembling. Dr. Wilkins patted her hand perfunctorily. He noticed
Hassmann watching them, and glared at him with murderous resent¬
ment, his careful mask slipping for a moment. Hassmann stared stonily
back. “It’ll be all right, Fran,” Dr. Wilkins said, patting her hand again.
“It’s just until we get inside. Julian promised me that he wouldn’t let any
of them into the restaurant.” Mrs. Wilkins was shaking her head blindly.
“It’ll only be a minute. Let me do all the talking. It’ll be okay, you’ll see.”

Dinner Party 65

He looked coldly at Hassmann. “Come on,” he said brusquely, to
Hassmann, and got out of the car. He walked quickly around to the
passenger side, opened the door, and said, “Come on” again, to his wife
this time, in a low coaxing tone an adult might use to a frightened child.
Even so, he had to reach down and half-pull her to her feet before he
could get her out of the car. He bent to look at Hassmann again. “You,
too,” he said in a harsh, dangerous voice. “Come on. Don’t give me any
trouble now, you little shit. Get out.”

Hassmann climbed out of the car. It was colder than ever, and he could
feel the clammy sweat drying on his body with a rapidity that made him
shiver. Dr. Wilkins came up between him and Mrs. Wilkins and took each
of them by the arm; and they began walking toward the restaurant. The
reporters were looking toward them now, and the camera lights on the
van came on, nearly blinding them.

Dr. Wilkins kept them walking right at the reporters. The small crowd
parted and reformed around them, swallowing them, and then it seemed
to Hassmann as if everything was happening at once, too fast to follow.
Faces jostled around him, faces thrust forward toward him, their mouths
opening and closing. Voices gabbled. A reporter was saying, “with the
ratification vote on the Act of Secession coming up in the statehouse
Wednesday, and similar votes later this week in Michigan, Ohio, and
Colorado,” and Dr. Wilkins was waving his hand airily and saying, “more
than enough support on the floor.” Another reporter was saying some¬
thing to Mrs. Wilkins and she was dully muttering, “I don’t know, I don’t
know....” Flashbulbs were popping at them now, and they had climbed
part-way up the restaurant steps. Someone was thrusting a microphone
into Hassmann’s face and bellowing, “make you feel?” and Hassmann
was shrugging and shaking his head. Someone else was saying, “latest
Gallup poll shows that two-thirds of the people of West Virginia support
sucession,” and Dr. Wilkins was saying, “everything you hear, love?” and
the reporters laughed.

Hassmann wasn’t listening any more. Ever since last weekend he had
been walking around like a somnambulist, and now the feeling had
intensified; he felt feverish and unreal, as if everything were happening
behind a thin wall of insulating glass, or happening to someone else while
he watched. He barely noticed that Dr. Wilkins had stopped walking and
was now staring directly into the blinking eye of the minicam, or that
the reporters had grown curiously silent. Dr. Wilkins had let his face
become serious and somber, and when he spoke this time it was not in
the insouciant tone he’d been using a moment before, but in a slow,
sincere, gravelly voice. The voice seemed to go on and on and on, while

66 Gardner Dozois

Hassmann shivered in the cold wind, and then Dr. Wilkins’ heavy hand
closed over Hassmann’s shoulder, and the flashbulbs went off in their
faces like summer lightning.

Then Julian was ushering them into the restaurant—fawning shame¬
lessly over Dr. Wilkins and promising to “take their order personally”—
and shutting the reporters outside. He led them through the jungly
interior of the old mill to a table in a comer nook where the walls were
hung with bronze cooking utensils and old farm implements, and then
buzzed anxiously around Dr. Wilkins like a fat unctuous bee while they
consulted the menu. The menu had no prices, and as far as Hassmann
was concerned might just as well have been written in Arabic. Mrs.
Wilkins refused to order, or even to speak, and her rigid silence eventu¬
ally embarrassed even Julian. Impatiently, Dr. Wilkins ordered for all of
them—making a point of asking Hassmann, with thinly disguised sar¬
casm, if the coulibiac of salmon and the osso bucco would be to his
liking—and Julian hurried gratefully away.

Silence settled over the table. Dr. Wilkins stared blankly at Hassmann,
who stared blankly back. Mrs. Wilkins seemed to have gone into shock—
she was staring down at the table, her body stiffly erect, her hands
clenched in her lap, it was hard to tell if she was even breathing. Dr.
Wilkins looked at his wife, looked away. Still no one had spoken. “Well,
Jim,” Dr. Wilkins started to say with leaden joviality, “I think you’ll
like—” and then he caught the scorn in the look that Hassmann was
giving him, and let the sentence falter to a stop. It had become clear to
Hassmann that Dr. Wilkins hated him as much as or more than his wife
did—but in spite of that, and in spite of the fact that he had already
gotten as much use out of Hassmann as he was going to get, he was too
much the politician to be able to stop going through the motions of the
charade. Dr. Wilkins locked eyes with Hassmann for a moment, opened
his mouth to say something else, closed it again. Abruptly, he looked
tired.

A smooth silent waiter placed their appetizers in front of them, glided
away again. Slowly, Mrs. Wilkins looked up. She had one of those smooth
Barbie-doll faces that enable some women to look thirty when they are
fifty, but now her face had harsh new lines in it, as if someone had gone
over it with a needle dipped in acid. Moving with the slow-motion grace
of someone in a diving suit on the bottom of the sea, she reached out to
touch the linen napkin before her on the table. She smiled fondly at it,
caressing it with her fingertips. She was staring straight across the table
at Hassmann now, but she wasn’t seeing him; somewhere on its way
across the table, her vision had taken the sort of right-angle turn that

Dinner Party 67

allows you to look directly into the past. “Frank,” she said, in a light,
amused, reminiscent tone unlike any that Hassmann had heard her use,
“do you remember the time we were having the Graingers over for
dinner, back when you were still in city council? And just before they got
there I realized that we’d run out of clean napkins?”

“Fran—” Dr. Wilkins said wamingly, but she ignored him; she was
speaking to Hassmann now, although he was sure that she still wasn’t
seeing him as Hassmann—he was merely filling the role of listener, one
of the many vague someones she’d told this anecdote to, for it was plain
that she’d told it many times before. “And so I gave Peter some money
and sent him down to the store to quick buy me some napkins, evenpaper
ones were better than nothing.” She was smiling now as she spoke. “So
after a while he comes back, the Graingers were here by then, and he
comes marching solemnly right into the living room where we’re having
drinks, and he says—he must have been about five—he says ‘I looked all
over the store. Mom, and I got the best ones I could find. These must be
really good because they’re sanitary ones, see? It says so right on the
box.’ And he holds up this great big box of Kotex!” She laughed. “And he
looks so intent and serious, and he’s so proud of being a big enough boy
to be given a job to do, and he’s trying so hard to do it right and please
us, I just didn’t have the heart to scold him, even though old Mr. Grainger
looked like he’d just swallowed his false teeth, and Frank choked and
sprayed his drink all over the room.” Still smiling, still moving languidly,
she picked up her fork and dug it into one of the her veal-and-shrimp
quenelles, and then she stopped, and her eyes cleared, and Hassmann
knew that all at once she was seeing him again. Life crashed back into
her face with shocking suddenness, like a storm wave breaking over a
seawall, flushing it blood-red. Abruptly, spasmodically, viciously, she
threw her fork at Hassmann. It bounced off his chest and clattered away
across the restaurant floor. Her face had gone white now, as rapidly as
it had flushed, and she said, “I will not eat with the man who murdered
my son.”

Hassmann stood up. He heard his own voice saying, “Excuse me,” in
a polite and formal tone, and then he had turned and was walking blindly
away across the restaurant, somehow managing not to blunder into any
of the other tables. He kept walking until a rough-hewn door popped up
in front of him, and then he pushed through it, and found himself in the
washroom.

It was cold and dim and silent in the washroom, and the air smelled
of cold stone and dust and antiseptic, and, faintly, of ancient piss. The
only sound was the low rhythmic belching and gurgling of cisterns. A jet

68 Gardner Dozois

of freezing air was coming in through a crack in the window molding,
and it touched Hassmann’s skin like a needle.

He moved to the porcelain washbasin and splashed cold water over
his face, the way they do in the movies, but it made him feel worse instead
of better. He shivered. Automatically, he wet a tissue and began to scrub
at the food stain that Mrs. Wilkins’ fork had left on his cheap pin-striped
suit. He kept catching little glimpses of himself in the tarnished old mirror
over the washbasin, and he watched himself slyly, fascinated without
ever looking at himself straight on. They had film footage of his killing
the Wilkins boy—that particular stretch of film had been shown over and
over again on TV since last weekend. As the demonstrators rushed up
the steps of the campus Administration building toward the line of
waiting Guardsmen, there was a very clear sequence of his bringing his
rifle up and shooting Peter Wilkins down. Other Guardsmen had fired,
and other demonstrators had fallen—four dead and three others seri¬
ously wounded, all told—but there could be no doubt that he was the
one who had killed Peter Wilkins. Yes, that one was his, all right.

He leaned against the wall, pressing his forehead against the cold
stone, feeling the stones suck the warmth from his flesh. For some reason
he found himself thinking about the duck he’d raised, one of the summers
they still went to the farm—the duck they’d wryly named Dinner. He’d
fattened that stupid duck all summer, and then when it was time to kill
it, he’d barely been able to bring himself to do it. He’d made a botch of
cutting its head off, faltered on the first stroke and then had to slash two
more times to get the job done. And then the duck had run headless
across the farmyard, spouting blood, and he’d had to chase it down. He’d
given it to his father to clean, and then gone off behind the bam to throw
up. All the rest of the family had said that the duck was delicious, but
he’d had to leave the table several times during the meal to throw up
again. How his father had laughed at him!

Hassmann was shivering again, and he couldn’t seem to make himself
stop. As clearly as if it was really in the room with him, he heard Captain
Simes’ voice saying, “He’s mousetrapped himself into it! His son was one
of the ringleaders in planning the campus rally, and he was getting a lot
of local media coverage simply because he was Wilkins’ son. So, just
before the rally that weekend, Wilkins published an open letter in all the
major papers—” Dr. Wilkins’ voice, resonant and sonorous as he stares
into the camera lights: —‘in that letter, I told my son that if he were killed
while taking part in a riot that he himself had helped to create ... well,
I told him that I would mourn him forever, but that far from condemning
the man who killed him, I’d seek that man out and shake his hand, and

Dinner Party 69

then take him out to dinner to thank him for having the steadfastness tc
uphold the Constitution of the United States in the face of armed
sedition—’ And so now he’s stuck with doing it, or losing what little face

he has left!” Simes’ voice again. Simes’ giggle.

He’d talked to Simes for nearly twenty minutes before he’d realized
that the tall glass of “iced tea” in Simes’ hand was actually 100-proof
whiskey, and by that time Simes had been glassy-eyed and swaying,
mumbling, “A civil war! And none of this nuclear-exchange shit, either.
They’re going to fight this one house to house through every small town
in America. A nice long war ...”

Hassmann stared at himself in the mirror. His face was hard and
drawn, gaunt, his cheeks hollowed. His eyes were pitiless and cold. He
could not recognize himself. The stranger in the mirror stared un-
winkingly back at him; his face was like stone, the kind of cold and
ancient stone that sucks the heat from anything that touches it.

A nice long war ....

He went back into, the restaurant. Heads turned surreptitiously to
watch him as he passed, and he could see some of the other diners leaning
close to each other to whisper and stare. Dr. Wilkins was sitting alone at
the table, surrounded by untouched dishes of food, some of them still
faintly steaming. As Hassmann came up, he raised his head, and they
exchanged bleak stares. He had taken his glasses off, and his face looked
doughy and naked without them, less assured, less commanding. His
eyes looked watery and tired.

“Julian is letting Mrs. Wilkins lie down in back for a while,” Dr. Wilkins
said. “Until she feels a little better.” Hassmann said nothing, and made
no attempt to sit down. Dr. Wilkins reached out for his glasses, put them
on, and then peered at Hassmann again, as if to make sure that he was
talking to the right man. He drew himself up in his chair a little, glancing
at the nearest table with a motion of the eyes so quick as to be nearly
imperceptible, like the flick of a lizard’s tongue. Was he worried that, in
spite of Julian’s promise, some of the other customers might be reporters
with hidden directional mikes? Some of them might be, at that. “I guess
I owe you an apology,” Dr. Wilkins said heavily, after a pause. He worked
his mouth as if he was tasting something unpleasant, and then continued
to speak in a stiff, reluctant voice. “My wife’s been under a lot of
emotional strain lately. She was distraught. You’ll have to make allow¬
ances for that. She doesn’t realize how hard this has been on you, too,
how unpleasant it must have been for you to be forced to take a human
life—”

“No, sir,” Hassmann said in a clear, distinct voice, interrupting, not

70 Gardner Dozois

knowing what words he was speaking until he heard them leave his lips
... feeling the final insulating thickness of glass shatter as he spoke and
all the raw emotional knowledge he’d been trying to deny for more than
a week rush in upon him . . . knowing even as he spoke that speaking
these words would change him irrevocably forever ... change Dr. Wil¬
kins ... change everything... watching Dr. Wilkins’ face, already winc¬
ing at the blow he could sense coming ... seeing the headless duck run
flapping through the dusty farmyard ... his father laughing . . . Mrs.
Wilkins’ eyes, watching him in the rear view mirror, in the dark... the
soldier popping his head up out of the tank hatch to watch them pass...
FUCK THE UNION... a nice long war... the hard, merciless eyes of the
stranger in the mirror, the stranger that was now him ... remembering
the clean, exhilarating rush of joy, the fierce leap of the heart, as he’d
emptied the clip of his semi-automatic rifle into the onrushing figure,
relishing the flaring blue fire and the smoke and the noise, got you, you
bastard, got you, smashing the other man and flinging him aside in a
tangle of broken limbs all in one godlike moment, with a flick of his finger

• • • t

“No, sir,” he said, smiling bleakly at the tired old man, enunciating
each word with terrible precision, not even, at the end, wanting to hurt
the other man, but simply to make him understand. “I enjoyed it,” he
said.

Tifler In the Snow

Daniel Wynn Barber

Daniel Wynn Barber was bom in Long Beach, California, on December
7, 1947. He grew up in the Midwest, where “Tiger in the Snow” takes its
setting. Drafted in 1967, he served in Vietnam, where he was wounded
in 1969. His wounds required two years of treatment at Fitzsimmons
Army Hospital in Denver. Barber was so taken with the city that he settled
there. He and his wife, Patricia, have a brand new son, Sean Wesley.

Barber’s fascination with horror has led him to create “The Fantasy
Puppet Ensemble/’a troupe that presents benefit shows every Halloween.
“Tiger in the Snow” is his second published story. Other stories include
“Light Innocence” in The Minnesotan Science Fiction Reader and
“Wings of the Hunter” in a forthcoming anthology of horror from the
publishers of Space and Time. Barber has also “banged out a 600 page
science fiction/supernatural novel. ”

Justin sensed the tiger as soon as he reached the street. He didn’t see it,
or hear it. He simply... sensed it.

Leaving the warm safety of the Baxters’ porch light behind him, he
stared down the sidewalk that fronted State Street, feeling the night
swallow him in a single hungry gulp. He stopped when he reached the
edge of the Baxters’ property line and looked back wistfully toward their
front door.

Too bad the evening had to end. It had been just about the finest
evening he could remember. Not that Steve and he hadn’t had some fine
old times together, the way best friends will; but this particular evening
had been, well, magical. They had played The Shot Brothers down in
Steve’s basement while Mr. and Mrs. Baxter watched TV upstairs. When
the game had been going well and everything was clicking, Justin could
almost believe that Steve and he really were brothers. And that feeling
had never been stronger than it had been this evening.

When Mrs. Baxter had finally called down that it was time to go, it

71

72 Daniel Wynn Barber

had struck Justin as vaguely strange that she would be packing him off
on a night like this, seeing how he and Steve slept over at one another’s
homes just about every weekend. But this evening was different. Despite
the snow, home called to him in sweet siren whispers.

Mrs. Baxter had bundled him up in his parka, boots, and mittens, and
then, much to his surprise, she had kissed his cheek. Steve had seen him
to the door, said a quick goodbye, then hurried away to the den. Funny
thing, Steve’s eyes had seemed moist.

Then Justin had stepped out into the night, and Mrs. Baxter had closed
the door behind him, leaving him alone with the dark and the cold and
... the tiger.

At the edge of the Baxters’ property, Justin glanced around for a
glimpse of the beast; but the street appeared deserted save for the houses
and parked cars under a downy blanket of fresh snow. It was drifting
down lazily now, indifferent after the heavy fall of that afternoon. Justin
could see the skittering flakes trapped within the cones of light cast by
the street lamps, but otherwise the black air seemed coldly empty. The
line of lamps at every comer of State Street gave the appearance of a
tunnel of light that tapered down to nothingness; and beyond that
tunnel, the dark pressed eagerly in.

For a moment, Justin felt the urge to scurry back to the Baxters’ door
and beg for sanctuary, but he knew he should be getting home. Besides,
he wasn’t some chicken who ran from the dark. He was one of the Shot
Brothers. Rough and ready. Fearless. Hadn’t he proven that to stupid
Dale Corkland just the other day? “You scared?” old zit-faced Corkland
had asked him. And Justin had shown him.

At the comer, Justin looked both ways, although he knew there
wouldn’t be many cars out on a night like this. Then he scanned the
hedges along a nearby house, where dappled shadows hung frozen in
the branches. Excellent camouflage for a tiger—particularly one of those
white, Siberian tigers he’d read about.

He kept a close eye on those hedges as he crossed the street. Snow
swelled up around his boots and sucked at his feet, making it impossible
to run should a tiger spring from behind the mailbox on the far comer.
He stopped before he reached that mailbox, listening for the low blowing
sound that tigers sometimes make as they lie in ambush. But all he heard
was the rasping of his own breath. (”You scared?”) Yes. Tigers were
nothing to be trifled with. They were as dangerous as the ice on
Shepherd’s Pond.

Justin had stared at that ice, thinking about the warm weather they’d

Tiger In the Snow 73

had the past week. Then he had looked up at Dale Corkland’s face, three
years older than his and sporting a gala display of acne. “You scared?”
And Justin had shown him.

But that was then and this was now; and weren’t tigers more merciless
than ice? Oh, yes indeed.

Justin gave himself a good mental shaking. He tried to summon those
things his father had told him at other times when this tiger-fear had
come upon him. {Don’t be such a baby.) At night, when he would awaken
screaming after a tiger nightmare. ( It was only a dream.) Or when he felt
certain that a tiger was lurking about the basement. ( There are no tigers
in the city. You only find tigers in the zoo.)

Wrapping himself snug in these assurances, Justin tramped past the
brick retaining wall at the comer of State and Sixteenth without so much
as a glance toward the spidery line of poplars where a tiger might be
hiding. He rounded the comer and marched on. Heck, he had walked
this way dozens of times. Hundreds, maybe.

But tonight the usuallycomfortable features seemed alien and warped
out of reality under the snow, and finding himself in this strange white
landscape, Justin suddenly felt the tiger-fear return. It bobbed up and
down within him until he could almost feel the tiger’s nearness, so close
that the hot jungle breath seemed to huff against his cheek.

He was halfway down the block when he saw a shadow slip effortlessly
from behind the house two doors up. It seemed to glide dreamlike across
the snow, then disappear behind a car parked in the driveway. It was just
a shadow, but before it had vanished, Justin thought he caught a hint of
striping.

There are no tigers in the city.

Justin watched and waited—waited for whatever it was to show itself.
He even considered turning back, rerouting around Rush Street, but that
would put it behind him.

Come on, he scolded himself. You only find tigers in India. Or the zoo.
Or behind parked cars. Nonsense. Tigers don’t stalk kids from behind
parked cars in the middle of an American city. Only little kids let
themselves be scared by shadows in the night. Not one of the Shot
Brothers. Not a kid who had dared the ice on Shepherd’s Pond. Not a kid
who was only two years away from attending Rathbum Junior High,
where you get to keep your stuff in your own locker and change
classrooms every hour and eat your lunch out on the bleachers. Kids at
Rathbum didn’t go whimpering and whining because they saw a shadow
in the snow—probably thrown by a branch moving in the wind.

But there is no wind tonight.

74 Daniel Wynn Barber

Justin swallowed hard, then started forward. He walked slowly, never
shifting his gaze from the taillight of that parked car. If only he could see
around it without getting any nearer. If something were crouching back
there, it would be on him before he could cover the first five feet. And
then...

... teeth and claws, tearing and slashing.

You scared?

You bet.

When he had drawn even with the driveway across the street, Justin
stopped. Two more steps, maybe three, and he would see if his father
and the kids at Rathbum Junior were right, or if tigers do indeed lie in
wait on winter streets. Of course, there was still time to turn back.

Perhaps it was the idea of turning back that propelled him forward. If
he were to retrace his steps, he would never know; but if he looked and
saw no tiger behind that car, then the tiger-fear would be banished, and
he wouldn’t see them anywhere. Not in bushes. Not behind trees. Not
between houses. Just three steps, and he could lay tigers to rest forever.

Justin took those three steps the way he had walked out onto the ice
on Shepherd’s pond. Old zit-faced Corkland had dared him, and he had
faced it.

One—two—three.

He turned and looked.

Nothing. Nothing behind that car but an old coaster wagon lying on
its side. No tigers. No lions, bears, werewolves, or boogie-men. Just an
old wagon. His father had been right all along.

He covered the last block and a half with steps as light and carefree
as those of a June day, when the air smelled of new-mown grass and the
sun baked your skin brown. But, of course, it wasn’t June, and as he
sprinted up his porch steps Justin realized that he had reached home
without a moment to spare. He could scarcely see his breath at all. Much
longer out in the icy cold and he thought his lungs might have frozen
solid.

As he stepped into the familiar warmth of his own house, he heard
voices coming from the living room. It sounded as though his folks were
having a party, although the voices seemed rather subdued—much the
way they sounded on bridge nights when the evenings began quietly, but
noisied up as the hours grew old.

Justin tip-toed down the hall, thinking it wise not to interrupt. And as
he passed the living room, he caught a snatch of conversation. It was a
man speaking, “ ... bound to happen eventually. They should have put
up a fence years ago. I’ve a good mind to ... ”

Tiger In the Snow 75

# *

“Oh, for God’s sake, Gordon,” a woman said. (It sounded like Aunt
Phyllis.) “This isn’t the time.”

That was all he heard before hurrying to his room.

When he flipped on the light, he was greeted by all the treasures which
reflected his short life in intimate detail. The Darth Vader poster, the
Packers pennant, the Spitfire on his dresser, the bedspread decorated in
railroad logos.

And one new addition, sitting in the comer on great feline haunches.

For the briefest instant, Justin felt the urge to run—to flee into the
living room and hurl himself into his mother’s arms, as he had done so
many times in the past. But as he stared transfixed into the tiger’s huge,
emerald eyes, he felt the fear slipping from him like some dark mantle,
to be replaced by the soft and gentle cloak of understanding.

“It’s time to go, isn’t it?” he said in a voice that was low, but
unwavering.

The tiger’s eyes remained impassive, as deep and silent as green forest
pools. Warm pools that never froze over, the way Shepherd’s Pond did.

In his mind, Justin heard again the pistol crack of ice giving way
beneath him, and he felt the chill water closing over his head. It really
hadn’t hurt that much, not the way he would have thought. Not much
pain, just a moment of remorse when he realized he wouldn’t be seeing
his folks any more—or Steve ...

... had it all been a dream, this last wonderful evening together with
Steve? Would Steve even remember?

Justin looked at the tiger, searching its peaceful face for the answer;
but those fathomless eyes kept their secrets.

“Did you follow me tonight?” Justin asked.

Whiskers twitched as the tiger’s muzzle wrinkled into a slight grin.

“Yes,” Justin said softly. “I thought it was you. You’ve been following
me all my life, haven’t you?” He turned to close his bedroom door, and
when he turned back, the tiger was crouching to spring.

Watch the Birdie

Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell has become an institution in The Year’s Best Horror
Stories, having appeared in every volume but one—and under three
different editors. This seems altogether fitting, considering that since his
appearance in Series I, Ramsey Campbell has become an institution in
the horror genre as a whole. As novelist, short story writer, anthologist,
and critic, Campbell has solidly established himself to be the best writer
working in this field today. An early prot)g) ofAugust Derleth, Campbell
was eighteen when Arkham House published his first book of horror
stories, The Inhabitant of the Lake & Less Welcome Tenants. Since then
Campbell has moved on to chill his readers with such novels as The Face
That Must Die, The Parasite, The Nameless, and Incarnate. His most
recent books include a novel, Obsession, and a collection of his short
fiction, Cold Print. He is now at work on “a large supernatural novel”
entitled The Hungry Moon.

Born in Liverpool on January 4, 1946, Ramsey Campbell is fond of
using his native city as a source for his particular brand of horror. At
present he and his wife and two children live in Merseyside in “an
enormous turn-of-the-century house [with] fifteen rooms or more and a
cellar and sundry other good things. ” “Watch the Birdie” was published
as a 100-copy signed and numbered chapbook by Rosemary Pardoe last
Christmas. Campbell’s own foreword and afterword (yes, they are true)
more than double the story’s disquieting impact.

This piece was written over the last two days of April 1983, at the
request of John Meakin, then the landlord of the Baltic Fleet, a pub on
the dock road in Liverpool. He published an intermittent newspaper called
The Daily Meak and was known to his friends as the Admiral. The account
that follows was to be published in his newspaper.

—Ramsey Campbell

77

78 Ramsey Campbell

WATCH THE BIRDIE

I hope I shall not be blamed if a true story has no proper ending.

Let me start by explaining that I’m in the business of making Merseys¬
ide disappear. No, I’m not a town planner: I create horrors as a writer
instead. Many of my tales have been set in Merseyside, and a disconcert¬
ing number of the settings no longer exist, rather as the model in the Poe
story died as soon as the painter had achieved her likeness on canvas.
For example, “The Companion” takes place in the old Tower fairground
at New Brighton; “The Show Goes On” is set in the Hippodrome cinema,
last seen in a series of skips; my novel The Face That Must Die shows
Cantril Farm through the eyes of a paranoid schizophrenic, though it
looks pretty much as it does to the rest of us, and now they’ve changed
the name of Cantril Farm. And my first novel was set in Toxteth. You will
appreciate that I have yet to write about the present government.

My novel To Wake The Dead (known in America as The Parasite, though
I haven’t room to explain why) contains a chapter set in the Grapes in
Egerton Street, during the reign of the Meakins. That’s how I came to be
in the Baltic Fleet recently, to present a copy to the Admiral. The place
was packed with office celebrations and planners discussing how many
trees they could plant in the car parks next year, and so it wasn’t until
closing time that I had a chance to make the presentation. The Admiral
locked the doors and offered me a coffee, and we settled down by the
parrot for a chat.

The parrot had been dozing so soundly that nothing had roused it, not
even the cries of anguish from the dock road as someone else discovered
there was no way into the Baltic Fleet car park. Now it blinked at us with
the balefulness of a Member of Parliament woken by question time, and
croaked something that sounded vaguely Russian to me. “I don’t now
where he got that from,” the Admiral said.

I had a momentary impression that I should know, but couldn’t think
why: something I’d seen in the pub? I glanced round at the deserted
tables, smudgy now that clouds like sludge were flooding the sky outside,
and wondered aloud if the pub had a resident ghost. “Could be,” the
Admiral said.

My interest quickened and so, I imagined, did the parrot’s—listening
for something worth repeating, I supposed. “You’ve seen it?”

“Heard it. That was enough.”

Watch the Birdie 79

He didn’t seem to be joking. “Good places to hear ghosts, pubs,” I
suggested.

“That’s all I’d been drinking,” he assured me, tapping the coffee mug
and earning himself a slow reproving psittacine blink. The pub was
growing dimmer. “Tell me about it,” I said, “and maybe I can write about
it for your newspaper.”

“I was sitting here one afternoon drinking coffee.” The pub had been
locked and deserted, the sun had dazzled the windows so that he couldn’t
see the deserted interior without moving from where he was sitting, and
quite without warning he’d heard someone coming upstairs from below.

You must have seen the steps that lead down to the toilets and their
famed graffiti, or if you haven’t yet you’re bound to: stone steps that look
as if they might lead to a vault or a catacomb. He’d heard footsteps where
he knew nobody could be, and so he didn’t call out, just reached for a
weapon. He was still hoping that he wouldn’t have to find out if it would
work under the circumstances, when the footsteps faltered and went
back downstairs. When he made himself go down, of course there was
nobody to be seen.

Again I felt there was something in the pub I should have noticed,
again I couldn’t think where. “What did the footsteps sound like?”

He pondered. “Not as heavy as they ought to have sounded,” he said
finally, frowning.

“Incomplete?” I suggested, trying to bring my description to life.

At last he said, “Big and slow, but as if they weren’t quite there.”

He didn’t seem happy with that either. “And how was the parrot
behaving while all this was going on?” I said.

“Nervous.” Then he grinned. “Talking to himself, God knows what
about.”

Suddenly I thought I knew. “That Slavonic stuff he was repeating
before?”

“Could well have been. How did you know?”

I wasn’t sure yet, nor sure that I wanted to be. “Hang on while I have
a wee,” I said, as I’ve found one tends to say when one is the father of
toddlers.

The steps to the basement were even dimmer than the pub. Somehow
the dimness made my footsteps sound muffled, timid. I wished the
Admiral would switch on the lights; I wished I hadn’t found an excuse
to go and look at what I thought I’d seen, instead of inviting him to look
for himself. I couldn’t help remembering that whatever he’d heard on the
steps had come back down here, couldn’t help remembering what I was
almost sure I’d seen.

80 Ramsey Campbell

It had only been graffiti in the Gents: a few scrawled words among
the collectible wit. I’d hardly noticed them except to wonder in passing
what they said, for I’d been distracted by the creaking of one of the cubicle
doors: I’d thought for a moment that someone had peered out at me, a
large pale face which had made me think of a pig leaning out of a stall,
in the moment before I’d seen there was nobody. I remembered that now,
and suddenly the basement seemed colder. That must have been why I
shivered as I went quickly into the Gents.

You’ve seen the graffiti for yourself, or you’ve been told about them.
No wonder customers come upstairs with a smile on their faces and their
heads full of quotes. But all I could see just then were the words in a
language I recognized now, scrawled in the midst of the jokes. I’d heard
those words more than once, I realized, and I had a good idea of what
they meant and what they could do. I started forward to the nearest
cubicle, for a handful of paper to wipe them out. I was nearly at the
cubicle door when it creaked open and something squeezed out to take
hold of me.

If I’m ever tempted not to trust my instincts I shall remember that
moment. Instinct made me close my eyes tight while I lurched out of

reach, toward the scrawled words. I kept my eyes on the words as I

*

rubbed at them frantically, with my hands, since that was the quickest
way. At the edge of my vision I had the impression of a figure so swollen
it filled the doorway through which it was trying to struggle, arms that
seemed to be lengthening as they groped toward me, groped then rose
toward the large flat face that appeared to have no features. They poked
at it, and then it had eyes—holes, at any rate. Then I’d rubbed out the
last traces of the words, and I was alone but for the creaking of the door
of the empty cubicle.

I admit it didn’t take me long to climb the steps, yet by the time I
reached the top I’d managed to persuade myself that I couldn’t have seen
all that, couldn’t have seen anything like it. The pub looked as dim as
the steps now. I might have asked the Admiral to put on the lights, but
just then I wanted to ask my questions and get out of there. “Have you
been crossing any Russians lately?” I said, as lightly as I could.

“Not unless you count selling Vladivar, no.”

He thought I wasn’t serious. “Just think about it. You haven’t had
trouble with anyone Slavonic?”

“Not in the pub, no.”

I could tell he was remembering. “Outside?”

“Might have been. They could have been Slavs. A couple of sailors

Watch the Birdie 81

pulled knives on each other in the car park one night, and we had to sort
them out, that’s all.”

“They couldn’t have sneaked in here afterward, could they?”

“Not a chance.”

“That makes sense.”

He stood up to switch on the lights. “Going to tell me about it?” he
said.

“When I’ve told you how I know.” Both his gaze and the parrot’s were
making me uncomfortable. “You see,” I said, “I once did some research
for a novel about the basis of all the vampire legends, until I found
someone else had already written it. One thing I did was talk to a
specialist in Slavonic languages who told me some of the old Slavonic
incantations. There were a couple I wouldn’t have used even if I’d written
the book; not once he told me what they were supposed to call up. Well,”
I said, glad to get it over with, “one of them was written on the wall in
your Gents.”

He jumped up. “It’s there now?”

“It was until I rubbed it out.”

He sat down again and gave me a doubtful look. I could see he thought
I was making up the story for his newspaper. “How come you can read
Slavonic writing?” he said suspiciously.

“I can’t. I copied the stuff I researched down phonetically, and that’s
what whoever wrote it in the Gents did. Don’t you see, whichever sailor
wanted to get his own back on you sent someone in to write it for him,
told him what to write. And that’s not all they did—”

But there was no need for me to go on, for the parrot had started
croaking—croaking the words it had already tried to pronounce. I
pointed nervously at it while the Admiral frowned at me, then I punched
the cage to interrupt the bird before it could finish.

The Admiral’s frown was no longer puzzled but dangerous. “What did
you want to do that for?” he demanded.

“Didn’t you hear what it was saying? Whoever was sent in here didn’t
just write the words on the wall, they must have spoken them as well
when there was nobody to hear—nobody but him,” I said, nodding at
the parrot, which glared at me. “Couldn’t you tell it was Slavonic?”

The Admiral wasn’t convinced. “You haven’t told me yet,” he growled,
“what it was supposed to do.”

I couldn’t go into that, not then, not there. “Let’s just say that if you
used the invocation in a graveyard, what it called up would be dreadful
enough, but if you weren’t in a graveyard it would be something even
less human,” I said, but my last few words might well have been

82 Ramsey Campbell

inaudible, for he was turning his head toward the steps. I saw his face
change, and knew what he was hearing before I heard it myself.

I should have known that the footsteps would be terribly slow.
“They’re bigger,” the Admiral whispered, and I could hear what he
meant, though I was hearing them for the first time: they sounded as if
they were growing as they lumbered up the stairs—as if they were putting
on more substance. I had disliked the dimness, but now I wished
desperately that he hadn’t turned on the lights: at least then we would
have been spared seeing. The footsteps came up halfway, unsteadily but
purposefully, and I saw what might have been the top of a head,
something white and rounded that seemed to be having trouble in
keeping its shape. I was praying to be able to look away, to be able not
to see any more, when the white dome jerked downward, the footsteps
plodded back to the basement. Interrupting had achieved something
after all.

Well, I told you at the outset that I couldn’t promise you a proper
ending. I still visit the Baltic Fleet, for the food as much as anything, but
not after dark. I admit I keep a sharp eye on the parrot and the graffiti,
and sometimes I need to be spoken to twice. I know the Admiral doesn’t
take kindly to people hitting the parrot’s cage, and so I can only suggest
that if you hear the bird speaking what sounds like Slavonic you do your
best to interest it in something else. Quickly.

I delivered the story to John Meakin at the beginning of May 1983.1
visited the pub several times during that year, but the newspaper hadn’t
yet been published. Close to Christmas 19831 arrived at the pub to find
it locked and shuttered. It reopened under the new management this year.
Nobody seems to know where John Meakin is.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You

by David J. Schow

David J. Schow was born on July 13, 1955, in Marburg, West
Germany—a German orphan adopted by American parents. He left
Europe while a child and traveled all across the United States, before
settling down in Los Angeles. As his fiction indicates, Schow is an avid
film buff, and he claims to know more spatter films trivia than anyone
on Earth. Most of his writing has been on films, either as a columnist for
various publications or as a contributing editor to film books. He has
recently completed an eight-part series on the television s/iow The Outer
Limits for Twilight Zone Magazine. (He had to use a pseudonym, Oliver
Lowenbruck, when the following story appeared in the same issue of that
magazine as did one of the series.) An outgrowth of those articles was
The Outer Limits Companion, out this fall from Berkley. Schow has
written eleven novelizations and series novels under at least four separate
pseudonyms for Warner and Universal. His short fiction has appeared in
Whispers, Weird Tales, Fantasy Tales, Night Cry, Galileo, and Ares.

Schow also appeared in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII—
also with a story set in a movie theatre, “One for the Horrors.” Despite
its title, this last was a piece of whimsical fantasy; despite its title, the
following story is out-and-out horror. Schow seems to be a connoisseur
of rundown movie houses. He writes: “Like J.A. Bijou’s in ‘One for the
Horrors,’ the Omicron was based on a real theatre (one in L.A.) that was
massively refurbished as soon as I wrote about it. ”

Jonathan daniel stoner recognized the dude inside the Hollywood Magic
Shoppe, the fellow poring over the display plaque of artificial eyeballs.
He was from the Omicron Cinema; one of the employees. Always having
five minutes to squander. Jack (as Jonathan had been dubbed in Nam
by the few comrades with enough intellectual candlepower to add his
first and middle names up to the sum of a tepid joke: hey there’s another
guy here named Richard Whiskey but we call him Dick Liquor yock yock
yock) pulled himself in. He saw that the fake eyeballs were pretty

83

84 by David J. Schoiv

damned authentic. Nested in felt, they were glossed with some special
shellac that made them gleam like real, living, wet eyes. Artificial
substitutes, he thought, and his missing right leg sent a wholly imaginary
local wince up to his brain.

“Say hey,” he said.

The dude from the Omicron looked up. As his face was hit by the
combination of the sputtering fluorescents above and the dirty gray
daylight sneaking in off Hollywood Boulevard, Jack thought maybe the
guy had mononucleosis or something; superficially he looked like mere
hippie fallout a decade and a half out of step with the real world, but
close up Jack saw that his face was the color of a kitchen sink stained by
coffee grounds. Above the face was hair skewed in a dozen directions,
matted, unwashed; below, a physique withered by hard weather or drugs
or both. His eyes were sunken and glazed with the slightly stoned
expression Jack had learned from the perimeter snipers at Nest Kilo—
bumed-out Qui Nohn alumni who just didn’t give a shit anymore. And
the hippie image was jelled by the overpowering miasma (no, stink) of
patchouli oil wafting from every pore toward Jack like mustard gas. God,
he hated the stuff.

The dude had not quite connected yet, and appeared to be waiting for
more input.

“I come into the Omicron all the time,” Jack prompted. “Last week I
caught Dial Mfor Murder and House of Wax. The two-way 3-D glasses
were a neat idea.” Some management genius had stamped out dual
lenses that were red-green for the black-and-white feature, and flipped
to polarized lenses for color. The two-dollar show had been packed.

It seemed to take entire geologic ages for the dude to react. “Oh yeah,”
he said in an arid, rasping voice. “I seen you lotsa times. I remember your
walking stick. Yeah.” He turned back to his tray of eyeballs.

Jack shifted his weight from his government-issue cane, leaning closer
to regain the dude’s attention despite the eye-watering, minty stench.
“What’s next?”

Again the slow shift, as though the dude were crippled in a way Jack
could not see. Always say handicapped, not crippled, Compton, the CO,
had advised with shit-eating sincerity before his discharge. At least you’ve
fought your last battle, soldier. Compton had always had a supreme
rectal-cranial inversion.

Crippled. The dude arm-wrestled his own memory and won. “Uhh—
Bloody Mama and Bonnie and Clyde. That’s it for Crime Week. For the
weekend we got Black Moon. And... uh...” He plucked a wine-bottle-
green eyeball from the tray and inspected it through a nonexistent loupe,

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You 85

fk

turning it like a jewel. “Some other Louis Malle film. My Dinner with
Andre, maybe.” His voice was strep-throat dry, and sounded like a bad
parody of the Man with No Name.

“Or Atlantic City?”

“One or the other. See ya there, my man.” He extended his free hand
and Jack found himself receiving his first power-to-the-people hand¬
shake in ten years. The dude’s yogurt pallor was easy to dismiss as the
cost of toiling in the eternal darkness of a theatre, but the papery texture
of his flesh made Jack think of shaking hands with a mummy. The brittle
skin seemed to crackle in his grasp, the bones beneath rearranging
themselves arthritically like dried voodoo talismans. Up, down, once,
twice, zomboid and mechanical. Jack remembered the rack of artificial
steel and vinyl arms stored near the shelves from which the medics picked
a leg to replace the one he’d lost. It had been like a tombful of dismem¬
bered mannikins, the limbs and parts devoid of viscera; hollow, lifeless
surrogates. The Omicron dude’s dead grasp was what Jack thought
shaking with one of those plastic-coated hooks would feel like.

The dude unclasped, then produced from his pocket a slim card in a
cashier’s-check pattern of waffled green lines, with GOOD FOR ONE
FREE ADMISSION stamped on front. “Yours,” he said. “Got to keep our
regulars satisfied.”

“Hey, thanks.” Abruptly Jack felt like a heel for mentally bumming the
dude.

“See you there.” He sought the mate for the single glass eye he
balanced in his palm, like pairing dearies for luck in marbles.

Jack executed his stiff, clockwork 180-degree turn and left the store,
the thump-click of his workboot and cane in concert barely audible. He
practiced to make it unobtrusive; he hated it when newly introduced
people gawked at his right leg before looking at his face. He thought he
could empathize with the way women felt about their breasts.

On the Boulevard, somebody had pried out the bronze disc of Rhonda
Fleming’s sidewalk star, stolen it, leaving a crater. A musclebound black
superstar, towering above the pedestrians on a hyperthyroidal pair of
roller skates with Day-Glo orange wheels, swerved to miss the crater and
nearly center-punched Jack. He and the cacophony of his gigantic
ghetto-blaster blended into the Friday swarm of walkers before anyone
could swear. He’d been wearing an Army fatigue shirt with the sleeves
ripped off.

Jack steadied himself against the display window of the Hollywood
Magic Shoppe and allowed himself ten seconds of hemlock-pure racism.
It primed him, erasing the good feeling of copping a free pass to the

86 by David J. Schow

Omicron, and as he walked through the grimy, humid smog and the
abrasive tide of Boulevard flotsam, he escalated his irritation into un¬
focused, hair-trigger anger. Everyone around him on the street was
loping along, trying to look badder than everyone else.

Jack’s cane attracted no notice on the Boulevard. He was a mundane
diversion in the midst of the jarhead Marines on leave, the slutty preteen
heartbreakers leaning on the bus stop posts, the meandering gaggles of
Japanese tourists, the smug pairings of smartly leathered punks and
overconfident faggots, the Hollywood vets with their straight-ahead
stares (the better to avoid the pushy Scientologists just this side of Las
Palmas), the garbage-pickers and shopping-bag loonies. The Walk of the
Stars seemed perpetually encrusted with a gummy vomit of spilled drinks
and litter, like the sticky floor of a porno theatre. Along the maze of
blaring rock noise and Iranian jewelry shops, step-in eateries displayed
steaming, greasy triangles of pizza, or the oily components of colorless
hero sandwiches, or peculiar platefuls of what looked like Korean food,
varnished for presentation, reminding him of those eyes—preserved,
fakely realistic surrogates. The lavender spire of Frederick’s pierced the
waistline of the Boulevard somewhere behind him, a centerpiece to the
whole tacky, vulgar carnival.

You’ve fought your last battle, crip.

The words fried into Jack’s brain, spoken too many times in too many
subtle ways. The sentiment ate into his calm like fluoric acid into the fuse
of a beer-bottle bomb. This place could really drag you down.

He decided the Omicron pass was not snotty charity, and then forgot
about it, feeling a little better.

His grimace into the mirror told him he should shave more often, pay
more attention to his hair. But what the hell—he wouldn’t care so much
half an hour from now.

The prostitute pulled her sweater over her head. Her comer was by
the House of Pancakes on Sunset Boulevard, and Jack always thought
there was a terrific joke in that somewhere. The first thing she looked at
while she stripped was the fleshtone plastic and metal ornamentation of
his right leg.

Traveling light. M-l6on rapid-fire, clips in his shirt, rifle grenades taped
across his thighs. Bravo Patrol’s point man was fifty yards back, sauntering
down the dead center of the jungle trail because he knew the anti-personnel
mines were salted slyly into the border of the path where careful soldiers
might tread. They all knew. Across from him, his counterpart, Teller, eased
ahead to help flush out snipers on the opposite side of the path. He and
Teller were Bravo Patrol’s big mavericks. Teller collected VC ears and

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You 87

sometimes their halls. The crumping sound of 60-millimeter mortar fire was
starting to deafen them. Time to be careful.

She crushed out an unfiltered Lucky Strike and said, “They almost took
a packet of your shot, lover.” He saw the wings of flab curving over her
kidneys. Her ass seemed a yard wide.

“No, they didn’t,” he said, rehearsed. “And yes, it all still works.” He
waited naked on the bed. Exposed.

“Talkers are always comedians,” she said as she descended on him.
The roots of her hennaed blonde hair were brown.

Ears pricking. Seeing that stupid bastard Teller and realizing and
forgetting his craving for a smoke and using up three more seconds ripping
a grenade loose and locking it into the muzzle ofM-16. No time. Wanting
to scream they’re right above you stupid asshole! No time—stock to
shoulder, finger to trigger. The weapon kicks and the tree thirty yards over
mushrooms into an orange blossom of fire and screaming Cong. Teller’s
mouth drops like a stag party patsy’s in surprise and he sprays the tree above
uselessly with slugs. The whole goddamn jungle comes alive with the nasty,
spattering racket of weapons fire like a crazy typewriter noise or water
dripped into a pan of hot bacon grease. Not like movie gunfire. The flaming
tree lights up the entire perimeter and he is exposed. Has to buy five seconds,
has to retreat to cover while Bravo charges to catch up. Backing gingerly
through fronds onto the trail. Feeling his footfall short. He makes one step
blind because he’s watching Teller’s head leave his body. It spins.

There was flat, sour bile in his throat. The whore had too much mileage
on her and was unappetizing with her duds off. He felt unaroused and
ill. With a fatalistic devotion to duty she worked to excite him reflexively,
to make his own body betray him. It became boring, repetitious, like a
grindhouse stroke flick. He felt cold lying there, watching thin smoke
from the ashtray unreel toward the ceiling.

Nothing happens until he lifts his foot, then the mine POPS beneath him,
smacking air concussively through his head. He doesn’t feel the rifle grenade
taped to his thigh explode. No details; just a stab of heat and bright light.
The dispensary lights hurt his eyes more when he awakes, four days later,
thinking Bravo Patrol did his job for him.

She pushed off him immediately, and left her sweat on one of his
bathroom towels.

“Have a nice day,” he said to the empty room, watching daylight fade
across his barrack-neat arrangement of serviceable furniture, of home¬
made bookshelves and desk. He clicked on his TV remote, a do-it-yourself
project he’d tinkered together two months ago, and browsed the free
program guide he habitually picked up every Wednesday at the Mayfair

88 by David J. Schow

Market. Automatically, for a giggle, he thumbed back to the Community
Classifieds.

Beached Manatee Shelley Winters uses the Grand Canyon for a toilet!
Signed, The Scumbag.

If you wanted a good barometer of Hollywood’s blue-collar weirdness,
you turned to the Community Classifieds, suitably on the inside back
page of the TV schedule and printed on pulp stock so cheap that your
reading fingers were black by the time you got to the good stuff. For
those too illiterate to make the letter column of the L.A Times, too
straight to ever consider undergrounds (now facetiously termed the
“alternative press,” Jack thought with contempt—another sellout), too
normal and mundane to ever air their petty beefs anywhere but in a
playroom or a bar with a constantly burbling television set, the Commu¬
nity Classifieds were a steam valve and a cheap thrill all rolled into a
single weekly page of lunacy. Any local nonentity could phone in a
two-line “ad” or editorial comment for free; the paper always had too
many to run, and the week-to-week progressions offered by the column’s
stalwarts—people who by journalistic squatter’s rights appeared regu¬
larly, trading barbs under obnoxious pseudonyms—were more enter¬
taining than any diversions offered by the cursed tube.

COME BACK TO THE FIVE & DIME . . . ZARATHUSTRA: Nonwhite
athletically inclined punk-oriented animal lovers (handicapped okay) de¬
sired for (proto) fringe videos. Selected foreign audience. Flat fee. Working
name director. No amateurs orfreaks who answer ads like this — 685-8299.

Does anybody out there have one of those rubber-chicken enema bags
so popular in the 1950s? Hah, thought so. Dr. Sleaze.

House noise cassettes. Keep your canaries company while you’re not
at home. $7.95 ea. 757-4414 Eves.

Frustrated military, used athletes and adventurous college boys call
Sid. 556-4348.

Jack’s eyes skimmed past two familiar words, then backtracked to get
the whole message:

The Omicron Theatre should pay us money to attend such a moth-eaten,
seat-sprung, paint-peeling, roach-infested garbage dump! Flake away, hip¬
pie scum! D. W.E., South La Brea.

When he rose to pull a beer from his tiny refrigerator, he rechecked
his shirt pocket, forgetting his temporarily unlovely aroma. The free pass
was still there, and that decided him for the evening. His car, a 1972
Comet with the pedals displaced to the left, was still undergoing a
mileage checkup in the shop, but that did not put the Omicron out of his
range. He could still walk, by God.

Coming Soon to a Theatre Wear You 89

*

The Omicron reminded Jack of a kid’s bedroom. To an adult, a
noninitiate, it looked like a trash heap—but there was a comforting order
inside for those who cared to delve past the superficial. It would never
appeal to the Rolls Royce trade, yet was not quite as bad as the kung-fu
sleaze pits of downtown L.A. which looked as though they had been razed
by Mongols. The Omicron was, in essence, a “normal” theatre stripped
down for combat, its patrons exemplars of the no frills class.

Jack assumed the seats were veterans of less fortunate film emporiums
long since demolished. The heavy draperies, colorless with dust and age,
had been hanging around since 1930. The concrete floor had been
scoured clean of carpeting ages ago and remained unpainted; two-dollar
customers spilled an awful lot of crap. During intermissions the audito¬
rium lit up from behind; two emergency floods on battery banks com¬
prised the sole interior illumination. They were mounted high on the
comers of the projection booth like devil horns, and when they clicked
on they threw long shadows from the heads of the audience all the way
to the foot of the disused state in a silhouette mimic of a churchyard’s
listing headstones. When those lights clicked off, you’d better be sitting.
Jack knew, because here there no niceties like usher bulbs on every other
row, or twinkling blue “landing lights” on the aisle like he’d seen at the
Vogue Theatre. Even the EXIT signs on each side of the screen were long
dysfunctional.

And if the snack bar had been a restaurant. Jack would have found a
Grade-C certification ditched behind the clotted Coke machine. He
suspected that the roaches flatbacking it, feet-up in the yellow light of
the candy counter’s display pane, were victims of the popcorn.

The Omicron was practically Jack’s only acknowledged watering hole.
Like him, it was tatty in patches and looked broken down, but he could
pass its portals and trade nods of recognition with the dude he had met
at the magic shop, and that was important. He was a regular here, an
initiate, and he appreciated that the caretakers of this dump, unquote,
took pains where they counted—with the programming, and the quality
of the projection.

Oh, yeah—and admission was still two American bucks.

Jack’s terrific feeling of renewed well-being evacuated through his
bowels and good knee when he plunked down his free pass at the booth
and looked directly up into the varnished, wine-bottle-green eyes of the
new Omicron employee.

From the third row he could barely see the screen. The crash-and-bash
din of the gangster movies could not etch his concentration even in the

90 by David J. Schow

darkness of the theatre. The tarpaulined shapes in the orchestra pit
became ominous; the auditorium, an ambush waiting to happen. He
slouched in his seat. His mind chased logic chains like a lab rat on the
scent of good, putrid Limburger cheese. None of the available conclu¬
sions eased his shock by a mote.

He had shuffled dumbly through the lobby, knowing that to meet the
gaze of the candy-counter employee, the dude, would now be to let the
fear engulf him to the upper lip. Those flat, glassy stares, unwavering,
unblinking, like the appraisal of a puff adder, came out of a tray in the
Hollywood Magic Shoppe.

The Cong —a supernatural hive intelligence, they could blank a grunt’s
brain, make themselves invisible. Twelve-year-old commandos were kicking
President Johnson’s butt by proxy. The fear. It could ambush you in the
dark.

(On the screen, Bruce Dem, twelve years younger, indulges a sadistic
little flash of ultraviolence. Homosexual rape.)

The Omicron staff. Not shellshocked orts from the dead age of the
flower child. Just. . . dead, perhaps? Certainly they seemed to feel of
death, and smell of it. Fragile, with their mushroom-pale, coolly bleached
skin and their fixed, shellacked eyes. Stinking of aftershaves, colognes,
patchouli, any heavy oil or preservative base of alcohol. Moving, like—

The baby palm lizard he found at the base of a tree. The roiling chaos of
maggots revealed when he flipped it over. The legless grubs filling the
stomach cavity; their mad dining was what made the lizard appear to be
moving. Its flesh remained as an envelope, papery and stiff, a lizard-shape
to hide the fact of entrails long consumed. Its eyes were gone.

Crazy.

Motive, you dumb gimp! yelled his mind. Motive! The why of a fleatrap
cinema overseen by ambulatory dead people, or whatever the hell they
were. Certainly not to derail the world and the American Way.

(Robert De Niro, having spent an hour of screen time evacuating his
skull with airplane glue, is discovered amid the marsh reeds, his spike in
the dirt, a rubber lanyard still making the dead bicep bulge.)

A snap decision in the dark. Jack knew he had to investigate, to resolve.
It was what he had always done.

He found temporary satisfaction in the glow bouncing back from the
movie screen. One row back and five seats over, a black guy swaddled
in a stinking fatigue jacket snored gutturally and no one told him to shut
up or get out. In some of the wing chairs, the ones affording an
uncomfortably slanted view of the screen, more wineheads dozed un¬
challenged, their feet on the chairbacks. The others this far forward (guys

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You 91

with dates generally holed up farther back in the auditorium) seemed
totally narcotized by the film. The date duos, the monster-movie prep¬
pies, and the good citizens would scurry out during the end credits, while
the snoozing derelicts and street dregs of Tinseltown waited to be
ushered out under duress. For a couple of bucks over the flat rate for
Ripple, a spongehead could blow an entire day sleeping out of the
weather and sucking up racy moving pictures. Where did one find zombie
fodder? Just haunting the Hollywood streets like gray wraiths, filthy
blankets rolled under one arm, with hollow eyes and vacant stares,
hanging out long after the sideshow freaks and hookers and male hustlers
vacated Hollywood and Sunset and Santa Monica in the predawn. One
more bag lady, one more shopping-cart loon or religious burnout or sooty
panhandler would never be missed.

Intermission came, and with it a few more truths. He slouched down
when the auditorium floods blinked on, actually recoiling from the light
because he did not wish to be singled out. The decision to stay after
closing had already been made. During the second feature he must have
touched the pistol in the pocket of his pea coat a hundred times, to ensure
it still existed. He packed it around with him almost all the time now.

If trouble leapt out of the trees tonight, it was reasonable to allow that
he could win a physical contest against the Omicron’s scraggly human
cinders, even with a missing leg. Their bones must be like communion
wafers now, he thought, his hand seeking the gun unconsciously again.

It was a luxuriously heavy .45 automatic. Marine field-issue, and his
practice had been to pocket it whenever he traveled on foot. Lately it
lived in the pocket of the pea coat all the time. The sucker ate an
eight-round clip and an extra slug was already in the chamber. It had
frequently proven a ready deterrent to muggers, at least those marginally
human. Provided his thesis was true, even artillery like the monster .45
could not kill someone already dead.... But it sure as hell was capable
of blowing off arms and legs and heads at medium range, and they
couldn’t chase you if they didn’t have legs.

Provided he could retreat efficiently without one, too.

He considered his chances as the second film, Bonnie and Clyde, began
to unreel.

During one of its chaotic shootouts (Gene Hackman was about to get
iced by the Feds), Jack changed seats, edging closer to the wall of curtain
on the left side of the auditorium. As long as he was not in the firing line
between a viewer and the luminous rectangle of the screen, he would
never be noticed. He knew how to walk in the dark, even theatre-dark,
even leaning on the damned cane and humping his surrogate leg along.

92 by David J. Schow

Once on the fringe of the farthest row of seats, he edged toward the
nearest dead EXIT light. The suffocatingly musty curtains smelled like
some abandoned library, and his nose tried to sneeze. He held.

In another minute the early leavers would be hurrying out. He avoided
the stair railing leading to the push-bar exit, and angled behind the
screen, and looked up to be confronted by a reversed tight close-up of a
face thirty feet high. The boxy, flat-black speaker apparatus, its horizon¬
tal planes steeped in brown dust, directed its salvo away from him and
out through the million tiny perforations in the screen. Out toward—

He felt a mad, directional itch skittering from his hairline, around one
eye, over his nose. Stifling his cry of reaction, he slapped away the
cockroach before it could hide in his mouth. Yeah, the curtains were
probably alive with the goddamn things. He thought of them congregat¬
ing in the trough of the filthy Coke machine after closing, leaving their
egg cases in the drains, or mating in the cigarette butts and piss filling
the john’s two urinals. Did roaches mate or were they, what did you call
it, parthenogentic? Hermaphroditic? He hated the damn things the way
he hated breaking spiderwebs with his face, the way he hated the monster
leeches and vampire mosquitoes he’d met across the ocean. Or rats.

Above him, the screen lit up with an end-credit roll. Backwards. He
hunkered down and thought about rats for a minute.

The grunge theatre in Chicago is a sleaze-pit, cold as a corpse locker, in
the bosom of the annual blizzards. Jack and two fellow renegades from Basic
are celebrating their first-ever weekend passes by touring the Windy City.
Their passes are thirty-five hours old; now they are in attendance at a
triple-bill of skin-flicks aimed at the midnight-to-dawn beat-off crowd. The
theatre is in the middle of a burned-out DMZ called Division Street.
Swindler, grandly polluted on a fifth of George Dickel’s finest 80-proof paint
remover, re-dubs Chicago the Shitty City, tittering at the rhyme. Ford,
equally blitzed, elaborates by making Chicago the Puckered Red Asshole of
the Universe. Jack’s laugh goes cheesy and sour; he pulls his boots up off
the floor because he has spotted the rats quietly on the discarded candy
boxes and popcorn tubs. In the middle film, a cowlike naked blonde
accidentally sets fire to her bed with a smoldering reefer (the fire is a special
effect that must have planed away half the film’s $1.98 budget), and she
and her musclebound Latino buggerers flee the frame as a line of jet-gas fire
sweeps along the bottom of the picture. Jack hears the squeals from the
screen and realizes they are not part of the soundtrack. What must be dozens
of rats have been surprised by the sudden flood of light back there, behind
the screen. Unpleasant. The rodent army retreats into the dark, to mingle

Coming Soon to a Theatre Hear You 93

with the audience. He watches a crushed soft-drink cup manipulate itself
patiently across the cold stone floor. He gets up to leave.

Could there be rats in the Omicron? In California, maybe mice. A voice
in Jack’s head told him he was obfuscating. Rats did not worry him.

The house floods snapped on and the rest of the patrons herded noisily
out. Jack waited, secreted behind the hanging curtains, weight at ease
on his fake leg.

The EXIT door crashed shut—sheet metal hitting a wood jamb and
rattling a loose push-bar—and did not open again. For sixty seconds he
breathed shallowly, listening. Then he inched forward until he could see
the auditorium under the glare of the floods.

There were perhaps ten derelicts out there, still snoring. Maintenance
movements and sounds echoed toward Jack from the lobby area; then
somebody—the new guy, the one with the bottle-green eyes—moved
down the aisles, waking the bums up. Excuse me excuse me you have to
leave now. Jack watched his progress; the same speech for each sleeper.
They grunted. Some got the speech twice before reluctantly shuffling
out. One nodded and resumed sleeping—the black guy in the fatigue
coat. The Omicron employee moved to the next customer. Like shabby,
ragtag Conestogas lurching west, they dragged themselves out, all except
Fatigue Coat, who had been sitting behind Jack, and to whom the new
employee gradually circled back.

Behind Jack, the curtains rustled, moving themselves. Drifts of thin
dust sifted down. It might have been the vacuum effect of the front doors
closing.

He looked, and saw the Omicron guy standing mutely over Fatigue
Coat, watching him sleep, watching with those fixed eyes whose pupils
never expanded or contracted. Watching with the head-cocked attitude
and characterless gaze of a praying mantis surveying the struggle of a
future meal.

The other made his way toward the pair, dressed exactly as Jack had
seen him in the Hollywood Magic Shoppe. He had a baseball bat.

Budget security as well. Jack thought.

The curtains were still moving, wafting as if in an unfelt, warm breeze.
There was a faraway, crackling-paper noise.

When the dude swung the bat against the back of Fatigue Coat’s neck,
it made a sound like five pounds of raw steak smacking a linoleum floor.
Jack felt a sympathetic local jab in the area where his backbone met his
skull, and the black guy did a forward roll to slump out of sight between
the seats. They bent to lift him, and he came up as slack and limp as an
abused mattress.

94 by David J. Schow

Another roach dashed in a zigzag across the back of Jack’s hand. His
reaction came an instant too late, and when he tried to brush it away he
hit the curtain, and three of its buddies fell from the folds of cloth to the
floor and scurried away. The crackling-paper sound, like hundreds of
tiny, drumming fingers, was noticeably louder.

When he looked back. Fatigue Coat was being laboriously dragged
toward the orchestra pit. Each Omicron dude had a leg. And a dark, wet,
erratic smear was left in their wake, shining up from the concrete slope
of the aisle. It was something the regular patrons would never notice
anyway.

It sounded like rain, and Jack thought of the flea-pit movie house in
Chicago. His vision of the movement in the orchestra pit resolved into a
roiling whirlpool of scuttling brown bodies. Not rats. Roaches. Millions
of roaches, swarming over each other in the dark maw of the pit. Not the
killer cockroaches, the three-inch long monsters that could fly—merely
the tiniest household vermin, multiplied a billionfold before his awed
eyes. And around his feet. He saw them move in quietly scratching, brittle
brown masses across the floor like a shoe-sole-deep tide of sentient mud.
He thought of them detouring up his plastic leg, antennae probing. The
hairs on his good leg prickled. He held. The leeches, the Stuka mosquitos,
the goddamn kraits had been far worse, he told himself. The .45
automatic, polished to a dull sheen by the pea coat pocket, came out
now, shaking in his hand. The shaking pissed him off.

He thought of them living in the seat cushions, the curtains, the cracks
in the floor, the moldy planking and rafters, the termite-hollowed
superstructure. More than enough breeding room, even if one did not
count the snack bar...

The dude and the new employee heaved Fatigue Coat over the lip of
the orchestra pit into the riotous, churning sea of chitinous bugs. He
seemed to hinge at the waist, like one of those backward-jointed dum¬
mies used for the big jump in the cheapest films. He did not look real.
Neither did the sheer mass of waiting roaches—at least three vertical feet
of them, he saw now, swarming nearly to the rusted brass rail of the pit.
They embraced the body hungrily. The last part of him to submerge into
the attack of brown, bulletlike forms was his foot, toes protruding from
a demolished sneaker wound with dirty friction tape. Then he was gone,
gobbled up, and quickly.

The hammer of the quivering .45 was cocked now. The display below
forced Jack to grip the gun tightly in his fist and cock it with his free
hand. That was when he fumbled the cane. It dropped away, missing his
grasp, and hit the edge of the stage, somersaulting into the open, its

Coming Soon to a Theatre Hear You 95

rubber street tip bouncing it off the orchestra pit rail. It clattered to the
bare concrete floor. Loudly.

The EXIT door was still at hand, but Jack did not try to stump toward
it. He had heard it being chained shut from his hiding place.

They came for him behind the Omicron screen, clumping in cadence
up the exit steps like a two-man funeral procession, and found him
backed against the wall, pistol rigidly thrust out before him, a scepter of
power, a talisman against evil.

“No closer.” His voice did not quaver. The gun was now steady; the
threat was defined. His good leg held him locked to the stone wall.

The new employee’s voice croaked in monotone: “Excuse me, but you
have to leave now...” The bottle-green, glassy eyes stared at the dead
space between Jack’s head and shoulder.

Jack could not trust the light, but he was certain that the dude, the
elder employee, smiled at him when Jack uttered the single syllable:
“No.” The grin was dry and lifeless, a manipulated, puppeteered thing,
matching horribly with the fixed phoniness of the eyes and the memory
of fragile, cured, dead flesh. He moved toward Jack purposefully, grin
fixed, eyes fixed.

Second warnings were for bad movies, too. Jack cut loose his bonus
cartridge.

The boom of the shot knocked more dust out of the curtains. It
resonated inside the girderwork and made the steel cables securing the
screen vibrate. Jack flinched. What even an unmodified .45 bullet could
do to a human skull at medium close range was something seldom
depicted in those movies, either. Basically, it made a little hole going in
and a huge hole coming out. Frequently it could decapitate the aggressor.
That was how Teller had bought it.

A perfect black dot appeared on the dude’s forehead just over the right
eye. The hair on the back of his head flew apart violently, followed by a
cloud of brown, metallic chaff, like pulverized cardboard. It glittered in
the air and settled. Then roaches began to boil out of the forehead hole.
The grin stayed. The dude took another step forward.

Jack fired convulsively after that.

The eye exploded like zircon struck with a steel hammer. Dead teeth were
blown east like stubs of shattered chalk. The head disintegrated into flaking
quarters. Roaches flooded out from the neck stump.

Jack swung, dropped sights, and put a slug through the new
employee’s outstretched hand. No grimace of impact, but it spun him,
and he lost balance and tumbled headfirst through the curtains into the
orchestra pit. His buddy, sans head, was still tracking mindlessly toward

96 by David J. Schow

Jack. Jack squeezed off, and the point-blank blast tore away everything
below the dude’s left kneecap and sent it flying through the movie screen.
He crumpled. Freed bus scattered for cover.

Hurdling along, pole-vaulting, actually, click-thump, he made it to the
exit door without falling on his face. Roaches were crawling up his legs
now. The case-hardened padlock hasp and tempered chain were no
match for the bullet that kicked them apart, and Jack shoved the door,
doubling it back against the outside wall with a crash. Outside, the paving
was slick with rainwater; puddles gleamed back at him in the trapezoid
of dim light surrounding his elongated shadow. Good. They hated water.
He limped out into the alley.

He never saw the new employee, flailing pathetically in a waist-high
quicksand of chewing insects, struggling to stand. Nor did he see the new
employee’s seams burst, to feed the flood tide now cascading over the
fallen walking stick, testing, tasting, analyzing. Angrily.

The .45 burned in his fist. The loss of the cane pushed him into
overexertion . At least you’ve fought your last battle, soldier ....

Some guardian angel had abandoned a split half of broomstick in a
garbage dumpster, and that helped get him home. He stopped often to
slap at himself, and after about ten minutes he heard sirens.

The bottle of George Dickel’s finest on the countertop was thoughtfully
notched so a potential drinker might view how much stock remained. Of
the eight ounces inside when Jack burst into the apartment, four van¬
ished before he even sat down.

His leg relaxed at last, and he might have screamed. His breath
whooshed out and he bolted down another shot straight and neat, letting
his gut warm. Sweat dumbed up his clothing with dampness. He rested
the .45 on the table, next to the open bottle, and in a few silent minutes
he felt better, more relaxed. The gun had cooled.

Bam, he thought. Bam, bam, bam, and the dude popped open and there
they were, a hive intelligence, like the Cong, thriving under our noses, living
off our garbage, our human garbage, and good old Jack Daniels Stoner had
found out.

He took another pull from the bottle. A slower-killing slug, he thought,
looking again at the gun.

A hair was stuck to it.

Absently he moved to pluck it from the metal. It moved.

His insides jumped. It was protruding from the barrel, brown and thin
and wavering, and it was not a hair.

He thought he saw a madly scurrying roach speed out of the mouth of

Coming Soon to a Theatre Hear You 97

the gun. Quickly, he slapped at the bare table surface and strained to
check the underside. Nothing. It was his imagination dropping into
overdrive, fueled by the octane of whiskey. Nothing. The gun was clean.

But those little suckers sure run fast.

He did last rites for the bottle and shuddered. Then, grimly, he started
on the leftover beer. Soon he fell asleep on the sofa of his neat, ordered,
vermin-free apartment.

And when he woke he knew they had found him. He had ferried their
scouts home with him, and now they had him.

His good leg ached horridly. He remembered the aluminum crutch,
ugly and unused, still in the foyer closet. Before being fitted with his
plastic leg, he had learned to use the crutch as a surrogate. He tensed
before jerking open the closet door, and something tiny and brown
dashed out of sight behind the jamb. He was certain he had seen this
one. He grabbed the crutch, and again his peripheral vision noted quick,
dark movement, but in the time it took to turn his head and focus, it was
gone—hidden, out of the light.

The countertop! Leaning on the crutch, he humped feverishly across
the room. More nothing.

“Damn it!” Frustration and panic lay in wait.

The pistol was still on the table, but not as he thought he had left it.
Now its barrel was pointed at the chair where he had sat drinking. He
knew there were at least three or four slugs still in the clip, minimum,
and never in his life had he gotten bombed enough to leave any weapon
idly aimed at himself, loaded or no.

From the cabinets, the spaces beneath the counter tiles, the interior
of the stove, they monitored him. It was a reasonable assumption. He
stopped the childish bullshit of trying to catch them, and started to
proceed methodically.

He smacked a spare clip into the gun and reloaded the exhausted one
before sliding everything back into the pea coat. He pocketed all the
change he could scrounge. To leave became imperative—not to return
to the Omicron, oh no, not unless one wanted to spend a few months
posthumously helming the snack bar, but to get clear of the apartment
before they had an opportunity to catch him napping. The quiet walls
unnerved him now, pressed against him with the weight of a million tiny,
impatient bodies. Most likely they were right above his head and he could
not see them, like Teller.

On his way to the door he thought he’d spotted one on the tabletop,
maybe the one from the gun. He ignored it. He would never be fast

98 by David J. Schow

enough to get the little mothers. But he could be fast enough, sharp
enough, still to get out, to survive.

The night was still black and set. Droplet patterns from the a.m. mist
accreted on the metal of his crutch. He walked. He proceeded methodi¬
cally, with nowhere to go but away.

He was in the crosswalk at La Brea and Santa Monica when the
headlights nailed him. An oilslick-black Buick Regal, filled with the
resplendence of a coked-out pimp pilot and a pair of chromed hookers,
stopped with its front tires over the white line. Jack saw that the riders
were pretty jolly for three o’clock in the morning. He stared at them
through the windshield, realizing they had no idea of what was happen¬
ing.

An angry black face bared teeth through the open driver’s side win¬
dow. “Keep yo’ goddamn hands off the car, mothafuckin’ bum!” He
floored the pedal. Jack heard the engine roar and jumped as the Buick
ran the red and swerved back into the lane, ass-skidding like a slot car.
The jibes, in high, ridiculing feminine voices, echoed behind.

He stood in the crosswalk, arms open. “No!” They thought he was a
derelict, more of the human garbage washed up on the streets of
downtown Hollywood. Like the winos in the Omicron, like Fatigue Coat.
“You’re wrong !” he shouted, and his voice bounced off the Thrifty’s and
the Burger King and the car wash, and the bag lady sleeping on the bus
stop bench paid no attention. They all thought he was just another loon,
yelling in an intersection at three in the morning, and he felt the crushing
weight of the need to tell everyone the truth.

But the light changed, and he kept on moving because that was what
he was trained to do. He was still the point man, the patrol’s maverick;
his job was to make practical decisions fast and act on them instinctively.
As soon as he made the curb he thought he spotted a stray roach
struggling up his pant leg in the wet neon glow of the DON’T WALK sign,
and his fist instantly responded, swooping down to smash it. His plastic
leg resounded with its characteristic, drumlike thunk as his hand flat¬
tened the bug into nonexistence. He fancied he felt a reflex tremor from
the leg nerves that no longer existed, either.

His body skipped a breath and he froze. The sound his fist had made
against his plastic leg was subtly deeper than usual—the difference in
pitch between an empty glass and a filled one.

Jack’s mouth dried up with amazing speed. His plastic leg has hollow,
like the leg of a Ken doll. Lots of empty space down there where he could
not see. Or feel.

He tore open his pea coat and jerked loose the straps that held the

Coming Soon to a Theatre Near You 99

prosthetic limb buckled fast to his ruined flesh. From somewhere down
there another roach free-fell to land on its back, legs wiggling. Jack
pivoted on the crutch and stomped it into the sidewalk cracks.

Keeling madly forward, he grabbed the leg by its jointed plastic ankle
and heaved it in a clumsy cartwheel toward a litter basket next to the
stoplight pole. He did not see it crash-land; he was watching another
roach scurry into the sewer grating, wondering if it had come from him.

He left the leg there, jutting crookedly out of the litter basket, looking
like a vaudevillian joke. By dawn some bag lady would scavenge it. Under
the chancy light of the mercury-vapor lamps he had no way of telling
whether the bugs he now saw scuttering about on his abandoned leg
were from within the leg itself, or from the garbage already stinking in
the overfilled basket. They swarmed and capered as though cheated.

Using his crutch, rather proficiently he thought, he moved purpose¬
fully on into the slick, black night. His pantleg fluttered crazily because
it was empty, and for that very reason he paid it no mind.

Hands with Long Fingers

by Leslie Halliwell

Leslie Halliwell was born in Bolton in 1929, and he grew up against
an industrial background in which splendid new cinemas contrasted with
the poverty, unemployment and grime of real life. Since childhood
Halliwell has been a film enthusiast. He ran specialized cinemas in
Cambridge, became a journalist on Picturegoer, and was a publicity
executive for the Rank Organisation. In 1959 he joined Granada Televi¬
sion as a film researcher and later became program buyer on the
long-running Cinema series. Since 1968 he has been buying most of the
feature films and series screened by the ITV network, and he makes a
number of buying trips to Hollywood eachyear in search of material.

Well known in England for his books on television and film—these
include Halliwell’s Filmgoer’s Companion, Halliwell’s Film Guide,
Halliwell’s Television Companion, Halliwell’s Teleguide, Halliwell’s
Movie Quiz, Halliwell’s Hundred, and The Filmgoer’s Book of Quotes—
Halliwell would seem an unlikely author for a collection of horror stories.
Or maybe not. After all, most writers of horror fiction also have a keen
interest in films, so why not the reciprocal? Halliwell’s first collection of
supernatural stories, The Ghost of Sherlock Holmes (fittingly, the
author lives in Surrey), displays a deep affection for the traditional and
inventive talent of Halliwell’s own. Leslie Halliwell is currently at work
on a second such collection.

I don’t usually dream. What’s more, until I met Paul Binet I had never in
my life had an experience which might be considered supernatural. I took
life as I found it; I enjoyed my work and my pleasure; I expected a
scientific explanation for everything. Anything of value which I have
accomplished has been in the way of shedding further light on obscure
historical or literary events. I don’t welcome mystery; I explain it away.
In particular, I have exposed several frauds of a supposedly occult nature.
Yet here I find myself setting down a series of events which defies rational
analysis. Perhaps the very recapitulation of what happened, in chrono-

101

102 by Leslie Halliwell

logical sequence, will help towards further clarification. But I suspect
not.

When Emmanuel Hilary died in October, I was surprised to find myself
invited by his son John to attend the funeral. Very surprised indeed. I
knew the son only slightly. We were at Sidney Sussex together, though
I think he was in fact a year my junior. At any rate we went to some of
the same clubs. The father I knew not at all except from once attending
his course of lectures on Italian architecture. John introduced us, and we
had a drink together in the public house at the bottom of Mill Lane. In
his last years old Emmanuel acquired the reputation of being a bit gaga.
He squandered quite a lot of his considerable fortune on the restoration
of a crumbling eighteenth-century villa near Florence. He died there. At
the time I happened to be living in a rented cottage not far away, in a
village on the slopes of Monte Morillo. I was researching a book on
Cagliostro: not really my line, but one must find a way of paying the
butcher’s bills. When the invitation came, I hesitated for an hour, then
sent a note of acceptance. In the circumstances, a refusal might have
seemed discourteous. Besides, I felt instinctively that there was some¬
thing behind the invitation. John must want to see me. Thirty years ago
we had parted in Cambridge without so much as a handshake. Our only
direct contact during the last decade was a club dinner after my series
of radio talks on the occult; but I remembered him well as a man who
did not suffer fools gladly, yet was himself more devious than intelligent.
In urging me to visit his father’s mansion he undoubtedly had some
motive more significant than wanting me to help eat up the baked meats
after sitting through a doleful church service in a faith that wasn’t mine.

The Villa Fabricotti was hidden from the road. However much trouble
Emmanuel had taken, its situation was such that it could never suggest
anything but damp and decay unless the thick wood which surrounded
it were cut down. It was a rambling three-story affair with some rococo
additions; the basic design was rather vaguely Baroque. Some greenish
creeper covered much of the outer wall and almost all of the gatehouse.
The inner grounds were an unkempt wilderness of neglected fern and
shrub. Hardly a cheerful place to die in, I reflected as my elderly Fiat
plowed its way along the muddy drive after a morning storm. Although
we were well into autumn the weather had suddenly turned oppressive,
and I noted with distaste almost approaching alarm the presence of
clouds of great heavy insects, several of which crashed fatally into my
windscreen, leaving nasty gray smears. It was nearly noon; I was the last
to arrive. I noted with some amusement that the expectant beneficiaries

Hands with Long Fingers 103

were all present although none of them lived nearer than Westminster.
They looked like people who would take no chances.

John welcomed me with rather exaggerated bonhomie. It quickly
turned out that one of his reasons for asking me was that he hoped I
would join him and four others as pallbearers on the short procession to
the local church and graveside. I nodded agreement, but thought he
might have warned me: some people think they need only to have an
idea to see it done. He introduced his wife Madeleine, a middle-aged
charmer who looked well capable of getting her own way. Other so-called
mourners included his elder sister Wanda and her husband Henry
Marling, a beaky, avaricious looking pair. Then there was Reginald Bell,
Emmanuel’s other son-in-law via a daughter long deceased; and Eleanor
Cavendish-Warren, some sort of cousin, who was clearly approaching
her eighties.

We accomplished the business of the day as speedily as we could. A
young male mute walked in front of the coffin, and all the women behind.
Only the servants seemed genuinely moved; the family’s tears were of
the crocodile variety. Afterwards there was a buffet back at the villa,
giving me a further chance to observe my fellow guests as they masticated
their rather disgusting hot osso bucco and cold garlic sausage, followed
by what seemed to be a bread pudding of extremely leaden texture. For
me the coffee and strega were the only enjoyable part of the meal, and
after that I was thinking of taking my leave when John, perhaps sensing
this, came over to sit by me and offer another drink. Whatever else was
in his mind couldn’t seem to find expression, so to cover an awkward
pause I asked:

“Who is the little man in black with the long hands and pale eyes?”

I gestured briefly at a sober figure dwarfed by the marble mantelpiece.
He toyed solitarily with his coffee spoon. His well-cut coat was thigh-
length and looked Edwardian; it was devoid of buttons or lapels. You
couldn’t help noticing his hands before anything else: perfectly formed,
with elegant fingers, they seemed to have been borrowed from a man
twice his size.

“That’s Paul Binet. He sat at the back of the church.”

“Interesting-looking fellow. Is he French?”

“Half that and half Spanish, I think. He kind of goes with the house.
Father found him a few years ago in New York, working in one of the
museums, and took him on as a sort of librarian-companion. It seems he
specializes in occult manuscripts, of which we now have quite a collec¬
tion at the expense of the family fortunes. Mostly quite unreadable and

104 by Leslie Halliwell

unsaleable, I think. As a matter of fact, that was my main reason for
asking you over.”

So it was out at last. I tried to look politely inquisitive.

“I have to go back to London in a couple of days, and I’m afraid
business must go on even in the presence of death.” I mentally confirmed
my previous impression of John as a sanctimonious hypocrite. “After all,
there are thousands of quite valuable books here, and I’m a complete
Philistine. The family is rather afraid that Binet may try to get his hands
on the choicest items, and I wondered whether... well, whether you’d
be free to put some sort of valuation on them, give us a quick indication,
anyway.” John was trying to smile. “You know, tell us which ones to lock
away.”

I raised an eyebrow non-committally. “I could do that, I suppose.”

“I didn’t want to offend you by offering a fee, though do say if you’d
like one. I thought you might prefer to take your pick of the books, say
five hundred quid’s worth, or seven-fifty if you like. You might even enjoy
yourself.”

I pursed my lips. “It’s an agreeable enough suggestion, and I’d be glad
to spend a day or two at it. Especially with a bottle from your cellar to
lay the dust at lunchtime. But what about Binet? Won’t he resent my
poaching on his territory?”

John instantly showed his true colours. “Binet be damned. He’s a
servant in this house, and he’ll do what he’s told. The fact is, we none of
us trust him. Maddy thinks he was trying to set the old man against us.
However, it’s over now, before any harm of that kind could be done. I’ve
already seen the will, though we have to wait for the formal reading
tomorrow.” He collected himself and looked a little sheepish. “I say. I’m
delighted you’ll help us. Are you sure you wouldn’t prefer a proper
business arrangement?”

I shook my head. “Your first suggestion will be fine, and I promise not
to cheat. Five volumes of my choice, to a total not exceeding five hundred
pounds.”

I came back next morning at ten, only to learn that the family lawyer
had been delayed in Milan by some urgent court case, so the family
mourners had to hang on and were clearly not happy about it. Nor was
I, as it meant we’d all have to lunch together. John wasn’t in, so the butler
showed me straight to the library, a tall musty room with a richly
ornamented ceiling. Its walls were crammed with decorated oak shelv¬
ing, two banks of which projected into the centre to be joined by an
ornamental arch. Left alone with a flask of coffee, I opened some
windows and set to work. Of the seven thousand-odd books in the room,

Hands with Long Fingers 105

I quickly calculated that more than half were too modem to have any
significant value; so I noted the position of the rest and got busy on them.
Despite a certain orderliness—in some sections the Dewey system had
been adopted—some sections seemed very curiously classified. Suddenly
my attention was drawn by three bulky unabridged copies of Frazer’s The
Golden Bough, in different ornamental editions. I stepped into the alcove
which housed them, and found myself surrounded by a vast number of
volumes on the occult, constituting in total so great a proportion of the
library as to overbalance it completely. They ranged from paper-covered
how-to-do-it manuals of conjuring tricks to a few privately printed
volumes of black magic rituals, including an item which totally took my
breath away, a complete seventeenth-century rubric for the black mass.
There were books about spirit-raising, zombies and voodoo, human
sacrifice, witchcraft through the ages, and every other aspect of the
supernatural you might think of in a nightmare. An odd collection indeed
to find in the house of a man just buried, who presumably might have
gleaned from his library enough skills to transcend the barrier of death.

My attention was suddenly distracted by a light slapping or clapping
noise. I was so concealed by the alcove that I might have been hiding

f*

there. I stepped out to find Binet standing at one of the open windows
which surveyed the terrace. He had his long tapering hands half stretched
out before him, almost as though he was applauding. I couldn’t see any
sense in the action at first, then I realized what he was doing. I have
mentioned the very furry insects which banged and squashed themselves
against the windshield of my car on my first arrival. It seemed now that
there was a small swarm of them outside the window, and Binet was
catching them in his hands! Not killing them with a clap, but capturing
them in his deft long fingers, cupping them carefully one at a time, and
transferring them to a kind of glass case which stood on a nearby desk,
opening and closing it while he inserted the struggling insect with a
stylish flick of his supple fingers. As I moved closer I could see fluttering
inside the case half a dozen of the unpleasant creatures, and a couple
more dead on the bottom. Suddenly he became aware of my presence
and was so startled that he let his last captive free. It flew off into a dark
green bush.

“What on earth do you want those things for?” I asked almost
involuntarily.

His eyes rolled a little, his mouth opened silently, and he shook his
head from side to side. “It is nothing,” he murmured. “An experiment,
only an experiment. And you? You were ... looking for something?”

Something about the way he looked up at me suggested a dog which

106 by Leslie Halliwell

knows it is about to be beaten; something else suggested a dangerous
animal about to spring in its own defense. In that second Binet’s whole
personality seemed to be exposed. I knew that I could never forget the
slightly hunched shoulders, the crew cut hair, the sallow complexion, the
suspicion of an accent in his otherwise impeccable English diction. I
judged him to be in his mid-forties, though there were aspects which
might have made him twenty years younger or ten years older. I was
repelled by the hatred which clearly seethed in his pale eyes. Yet I had
no doubt whatever that he had cared more than any member of the family
for the well-being of old Emmanuel. He had that distrust of outsiders
which is the hallmark of the perfect servant. Blood may be thicker than
water, but love is thicker than either, and devotion to duty is a kind of
love. So I admired him; yet there was something unsettling about him.
I feared him; yet I understood him. The truth is perhaps that I instinct¬
ively sensed between us a kind of empathy despite the fact that it would
have been difficult to find two human beings more outwardly different.
I stress the word empathy rather than sympathy. My feeling was only
that somehow Binet and I were on the same plane. We would understand
each other yet not necessarily agree. This feeling of mine, after only a
few seconds of conversation, seems more than a little related to the
curious events which followed.

%

I quickly discovered that even though John may have mentioned my
likely presence in the library, he had not explained it. Privately cursing
my college friend, I spun Binet a yam about John’s wanting to make use
of the presence of an alleged expert to give a general view on the interest
of the collection. Binet listened attentively but was clearly not convinced.
He shmgged politely at my apology for trespassing on his preserves, and
finally shook his head. “It is not your fault. Not at all. I am aware that
they do not trust me.” His eyes opened wider in private amusement, and
the pupils gleamed. “But they may find that there is a small surprise
waiting for them. And then the world will know whom Emmanuel really
trusted.”

There seemed no answer to so naive a threat. The words had been
delivered lightly, yet they chilled and silenced me. I thought afterward
that perhaps he had not intended me to hear them. Perhaps the truth
was that he did not care whether I heard them or not. Abruptly he turned
from me and left the room, making no more noise than the breeze which
whistled outside among the cypresses. As the door closed behind him,
my eyes fell to the strange little glass case in which a few insects still
struggled while five now lay dead. I forced myself to examine the species
more closely. Horrible things they were, something over an inch long,

Hands with Long Fingers 107

with long jointed flealike legs, a furry abdomen and wavering antennae.
What could be Binet’s purpose in collecting such revolting objects?
Deciding that more prolonged study of them would spoil my appetite for
lunch, I made to return to my task. As I did so, my hand touched a book
which was lying open on the comer of Binet’s desk. It was in French. The
title was La Transference du Mort.

The funeral had been on a Wednesday. I worked on the library
throughout Thursday and the first part of Friday. It was toward lunch¬
time on that day the bombshell dropped. I was aware that the lawyer
from Milan had arrived, and that he was in conclave with the family. It
had just occurred to me to wonder whether the will had contained any
surprises when I heard the scrape of several chairs on the parquet floor
upstairs. As I crossed the hall with the intention of washing my hands
and taking a stroll before lunch, John came running down the staircase
in an excess of bad temper. His face was like a thunderstorm. He had to
say something as I innocently confronted him. What he said was: “Binet’s
got it! The whole damn lot! May the old man rot in hell!”

I never sought the whys and wherefores of the business. There was no
putting up with the gloomy vindictiveness of the family any more than
with the gleeful triumph of Binet. As I packed up, taking with me only
two books instead of the five agreed, John told me merely that two wills
had been found. The first gave the house to John and divided the fortune
fairly evenly between him and the rest of the family, with a decent but
not overwhelming bequest for Binet. The second and later document,
lodged with the lawyer only weeks before the old man’s death, left
everything, apart from small gifts and charitable donations, uncondition¬
ally to Binet. Not only did the family fail to get what they expected, none
of them was even mentioned.

For the next month or more my literary researches took me only briefly
to London; then I was off again to Liechtenstein, San Marino, and finally
Copenhagen. Occasional phone calls to friends kept me current with
what was happening in the Binet affair. Predictably, the will was being
contested by the family on the grounds that the old man was of unsound
mind when he made it. I passed through Florence in early December,
and once drove past the old house, but it seemed empty, though the old
padre whom I met in the street told me that so far as he knew Binet was
still in residence. Just in time for Christmas I flew home. Among the
letters awaiting me was a note from John to let me know that the second
will had been successfully revoked, and that Binet had been given notice
to quit.

108 by Leslie Halliwell

It was during that night that the dream came to me. I would have
attributed it to tiredness, overeating or incipient influenza had it not been
so very vivid, like a beautifully photographed film. It began with Binet’s
face, in what I suppose I have to call close-up. Heavily shadowed, malign,
evil. He was saying something which I could not quite catch, but then
the “camera” drew back and there was I, with my back to it, listening to
him. We were in the library of the Villa Fabricotti, standing near his desk
by the window. He wore what appeared to be the same black suit, the
one with no lapels, and rather to my surprise he seemed to be drunk.
With the curious certainty of dreamers I ascribed his condition, for some
unknown reason, to the effects of calvados. Some of the shelves were
empty, but the occult section was undiminished. Most of the furniture
was thick with dust. Even in my dream the atmosphere was unbearably
claustrophobic: I longed to get out into the fresh air. A small bed in the
comer had been slept in but not made up.

“You live very simply,” I said, my voice echoing around the room.

Now I could hear him. “Simply, my friend?” he hissed. “It is the others
who are simple. Binet won before, and he will win again. You know my
plan. Now I shall carry it out!”

“Plan?” I said vaguely. “What plan do you mean?” But he had already
turned away to the desk, and when he faced me again his hands held the
wooden box with glass panels in which I had seen him trap the gray
insects. I took a step backwards in revulsion, but it was full of the damned
things still.

“I shall show you, my friend,” said Binet almost maniacally, “what
good friends these creatures are, how they help to ensure that justice is
done. The Hilarys think they have won, but my reach is longer than they
can imagine. Watch!”

I can’t remember exactly how he did it without freeing all the insects,
but suddenly he selected one and held it by the wings, so it struggled
between the fingers of his left hand. A truly monstrous sight in the precise
detail now afforded to me. With his free hand Binet drew from some part
of his clothing a long pin.

“What the devil...” I exclaimed.

Binet smiled, almost sweetly. “Precisely,” he said, driving the pin
through the body of the insect, which reacted violently before shuddering
into lifelessness. “You see before you the remains of Mr. John Hilary!”

I was truly shocked. “You raving lunatic!” I said viciously.

Binet grinned foolishly at me, sweat standing out on his forehead as
he held aloft on its pin his little victim. “We shall see,” he murmured with

Hands with Long Fingers 109

a sudden appearance of exhaustion. “And now, my friend, I think you
had better leave ...”

Suddenly I was running in fear down the overgrown drive, and behind
me I heard insane, helpless, convulsive laughter which I knew to be
Binet’s. In my mind’s eye I saw him opening a drawer in which, carefully
laid out on white silk, were six small circles of coloured material, edged
with darker thread. On one of these he laid the insect he had killed, and
closed the drawer. Superimposed on this image there faded in an
old-fashioned newsboy walking quickly through the streets, waving at
passersby and shouting: “JOHN HILARY DEAD! JOHN HILARY DEAD!”

I woke up at this point, and hurried for a bath as hot as I could stand
it. Anything to wipe away the memory of that dream. I took my long-suf¬
fering wife, who had by agreement retired before my midnight arrival,
a cup of tea. She promised breakfast in thirty minutes. Meanwhile, still
obsessed by the dream, I felt that I must try to contact John Hilary and
see that he was in good health. It worried me that much. I had his
Haywards Heath number in my book, and dialed it twice, but there was
no reply. I looked up the London phone book but there were five John
Hilarys. By the time breakfast was ready I was feeling somewhat calmer,
but as my wife poured the tea she remarked, after asking about my trip
home:

“By the way, didn’t you say something last time you were home about
meeting some people called Hilary? John and Madeleine?”

I nearly burned my mouth on the tea. “Yes. I went to his father’s
funeral. What about them?”

“I’m sorry to say they were killed in an air crash. It was in yesterday’s
paper. I kept it for you.”

I grabbed the newspaper with an apparent rudeness which astonished
my wife. There indeed were their names, among thirty-eight victims of
the Paris air crash I’d heard about, with enough further detail to identify
them beyond doubt.

All shocks fade. I had ceased to think very much about the event, and
had almost forgotten my dream, when in mid-January I noticed in the
Times obituaries the rather unusual name of Eleanor Cavendish-Warren.
There was no doubt that she was the Hilary I had met; though seventy-
eight, she had died suddenly and unaccountably while wintering on Cap
Ferrat. Later in the month I read casually of a fatal car accident involving
one Henry Marling and his wife. It took me a whole afternoon to
remember where I had heard the name before. I felt like a man trapped
in a recurring nightmare. Of all the beneficiaries under old Emmanuel’s
will, only one was still alive: Reginald Bell. I had to warn him, yet I knew

110 by Leslie Halliwell

almost nothing about him. Remembering, I thought, his saying that he
was an architect, I finally tracked him down to an office in the city. His
secretary when she answered was reserved, sorrowful, and proper. She
was sorry to tell me that only two days ago her employer had succumbed
to a heart attack while holidaying on a Nile cruise.

I was afraid to go back to Florence. I was afraid of meeting Binet. It
was the end of May before I made the journey, on account of a final piece
of research which could only be achieved there. My wife came with me:
not exactly for protection, but because I didn’t want even to think about
my previous visit. On arrival, however, the city and countryside seemed
so serene that my fears vanished, and two days later I was recklessly
driving along the main street of Monte Pareto, approaching the gateway
to the Villa Fabricotti. My sensitive stomach rumbled distinctly as I pulled
up near a sign informing me that the place was to let or for sale.

I asked some nearby workmen if they knew that had happened to Paul
Binet. Yes, they said, he was dead. Found in the grounds on the morning
he was due to pack up and go. Stiff as a board, with a purple face and a
terrible expression on it. They didn’t know what happened to the books,
but a lot of the articles from the house, apart from the very valuable ones
which had been taken away, had been put up by the lawyers for sale
through a local merchant.

I found the shop without difficulty, and wandered uneasily around it.
I recognized odd pieces of occasional furniture, including a wrought-iron
standard lamp which had been in the hall. I was about to leave when in
a comer, resting on the second shelf of a whatnot, I glimpsed an object
which riveted me to the spot. Despite my revulsion I had to walk over
and pick it up. It was a glass dome about six inches high, and its contents
had last been seen in my dream. Sticking up from the base on a wire
frame were arranged what might have been six tiny, grotesque dolls.
They wore gaily coloured capes, and looked as though they were about
to play ring-a-ring-a-roses. At first and even second glance it was possible
not to notice that the dolls were really insects.

Weird Tales

Fred Chappell

Fred Chappell was born in Canton, North Carolina in 1936. He took
degrees in English literature at Duke University, and he currently teaches
science fiction and other subjects at the University of North Carolina in
Greensboro. To date Chappell has published eight volumes of poetry, five
novels, and Moments of Light, a collection of short stories which includes
one about Franz Joseph Haydn as a space traveler. Formerly quite active
in science fiction (he wrote for Robert Silverberg’s Spaceship and Harlan
Ellison’s Dimensions), Chappell is now far better known (and widely
respected) in literary circles.

His novel Dagon, although totally overlooked byfantasy/horror fans
in the United States, was a critical success in literary circles and highly
regarded in its French translation. Dagon is a rendering of the Cthulhu
Mythos in modern literary terms. It is also the best novel ever written in
this subgenre. Bar none. Fred Chappell’s story “Weird Tales” is an homage
to two of the writers he most admires. It is also an uncanny blending of
fact, supposition, and paranoia. This is not the usual Cthulhu Mythos
tale, despite the use of Lovecraft and others of his circle as actual
characters. Don’t read it if you’re feeling depressed.

The visionary poet Hart Crane and the equally visionary horror story
writer H. P. Lovecraft met four times. The first time was in Cleveland on
August 19,1922, in the apartment of a mutual acquaintance, the mincing
poetaster Samuel Loveman.

It was an awkward encounter. Loveman and four of his idle friends
had departed around eleven o’clock to go in search of a late supper.
Lovecraft was sitting in an armchair under the lamp, a calico kitten asleep
in his lap. He declined the invitation to accompany the others because
he would not disturb the kitten; cats were one of his numerous manias.
Shortly before midnight. Crane blundered into the room. He was enjoy¬
ing this night one of his regular fits of debauchery and was quite drunk.

“Lo,” he said, “I’m Crane. Where’s Sam?” He took no notice of

111

112 Fred Chappell

Lovecraft’s puzzled stare, but raked a half-dozen volumes of Rimbaud
from the sofa, lay down and passed out.

Lovecraft was quite put off, though the poet’s quick slide to oblivion
had spared him a dilemma. He would have had to rise in order to present
himself, and thus awaken the cat. Lovecraft insisted upon precise formal¬
ity of address; it was part of his pose an an eighteenth-century gentleman
sadly bom into the Jazz Age. He was a fanatic teetotaler, and Crane’s
stuporous condition filled him with disgust.

When Loveman and two companions returned a half hour later the
cat had awakened and Lovecraft set it gently on the floor, rose, and
walked to the door. He paused and pointed a finger at Crane, at the
ungainly form overpowered with gin and rumpled by the attentions of
sailors. “Sir,” he said to Loveman, “your friend is a degenerate.”

The effect of this melodramatic sentence was marred by the quality of
Lovecraft’s voice, a tremulous squeak. Loveman giggled. “Then I’m a
degenerate too, HPL,” he said. “Maybe we all are. Maybe that’s why no
one takes us seriously.”

Lovecraft’s reply was a toss of his unhandsome head. He closed the
door and walked out into the night, walked the seventeen blocks to the
YMCA, to his cheerless room and narrow bed. He undressed and, after
carefully laying his pants between the mattress and springs for pressing,
fell asleep and began to dream his familiar dreams of vertiginous
geometries and cyclopean half-gods, vivid dreams which would have
been anyone’s else’s sweat-drenched nightmares.

After two days Lovecraft and Crane met again and attended a chamber
music concert. Crane was sober then and Lovecraft was quite charmed
by his company.

It was an odd group of literary figures, these poets and fiction writers
stranded like survivors of shipwreck on what they considered the hostile
strand of American philistinism. They were not much congenial in
temperament or purpose, but they all shared a common interest in newly
discovered, newly reconstructed, mythologies. They felt the need to posit
in history powerful but invisible alien forces which had made contempo¬
rary civilization such an inhumane shambles.

Lovecraft’s mythos is the most widely known. In a series of fictions
soon to appear in the venerated pulp magazine Weird Tales, he told of
several eras of prehistory when mankind vied with monstrous races of
creatures with extraordinary powers for a foothold upon the Earth. Man’s
present dominance was accidentally and precariously achieved; those
alien beings were beginning to rearise from their dormancy. Lovecraft
delineated a cosmos that threw dark Pascalian doubt on the proposition

Weird Tales 113

“that such things as organic life, good and evil, love and hate, and all
such local attributes of a negligible and temporary race called mankind,
have any existence at all.”

Hart Crane’s mythology was not systematic; in fact, it was hardly
articulate. His sensibility was such that he was unnerved in his brushes
with the ancient presences he detected, and he could not write or think
clearly about them. But his old friends were interested to note in his later
poems the occurrence of such lines as “Couched on bloody basins,
floating bone/ Of a dismounted people . ...” Crane believed that Poe
had gained best knowledge of the Elder Dominations and so paired him
with Whitman in The Bridge as a primary avatar of American conscious¬
ness.

The most thorough and deliberate of these mythologers was Sterling
Croydon, who might have stepped from the pages of one of Lovecraft’s
stories. He was such a recluse that not even Samuel Loveman caw him
more than once or twice a month, though he occupied an apartment in
the same building with Loveman, on the floor above. Croydon rarely
ventured from his rooms; all those volumes of mathematics, physics,
anthropology, and poetry were delivered to his door, and he prepared
his scant meals with spirit lamp and hotplate. He was gracious enough
to allow occasional visitors, never more than two at a time, and Loveman
would spend an evening now and then listening to Croydon elaborate
his own system of frightening mythologies. He had been excited to learn
that Lovecraft was coming to visit in Cleveland, abandoning for a week
his beloved Providence, Rhode Island, and spoke of a strong desire to
meet the writer. But when Lovecraft arrived, Croydon withdrew, fearing,
no doubt, that to meet the inheritor of Poe’s mantle would prove too
great a strain on his nerves.

He didn’t appear a nervous or high-strung person, but rather—like
Lovecraft—a formal gentleman and the soul of composure. He was
fastidious and kept himself neatly dressed in dark wool. He imagined
that he was painfully photosensitive and ordinarily resorted to dark
glasses. His complexion was pale and often flushed, his frame slender
almost to point of emaciation, his gestures quick but calculated. Yet there
was a dreamy magnificence about him and when he held forth on various
points of Boolean algebra or primitive religion Loveman felt that he was
in the presence of strong intellect and refined character, however neu¬
rasthenic.

It was Croydon’s contention that his colleagues had but scratched the
surface of the problem. He had read Tylor, Sir James Fraser, Leo
Frobenius and had traced their sources; he knew thoroughly the more

114 Fred Chappell

radical attempts of Lovecraft, Clark Ashton Smith, Hazel Heald, F. B.
Long, and others, but considered that they had done no more than dredge
up scraps and splinters. He was convinced that one of Lovecraft’s
principle sources, the Pndkotic Manuscripts, was spurious, and that his
descriptions of such cruel gods as Nyarlathotep and Yog-Sothoth were
biased and vitiated by sensationalism and overwrought prose style.

He did not claim, of course, to know the whole truth. But he did know
that Riemann’s concept of elliptical geometry was indispensable to a
correct theory and that the magnetic fluxions of the South Pole were
important in a way no one had thought of. He had been eager to apprise
Lovecraft of these ideas and of others, but at the last hour his shyness
overcame him. Or maybe he had come to doubt the writer’s seriousness.

We are forced to speculate about the outcome of this meeting which
never took place; it might well have been of great aid to us, bringing to
public notice Croydon’s more comprehensive theories and engendering
in Lovecraft a deeper sense of responsibility.

The one result we know, however, is that Croydon’s life became even
more reclusive than before. He almost never saw Loveman and his
companions anymore, and no one was admitted now to his rooms. The
single exception to this general exclusion was Hart Crane. Croydon
thought that he saw qualities and capabilities in Crane lacking in his
coarser-grained friends, and he would receive the poet at any time of the
day or night. Drinking himself only a little wine, blackberry or elderberry,
he kept a supply of gin for Crane, who never arrived sober and who would
not stay unless there was something to drink.

So it was to Crane that Croydon poured out all his certainties, theories,
and wild surmises. Almost all of it would have made no sense to Crane
and would be distorted by his fever for poetry and disfigured by alcoholic
forgetfulness. Yet he was impressed by this anomalous scholar and bits
and pieces of those midnight disquisitions lodged in his mind. Perhaps
Croydon’s talk impressed him in a way it might not have done if he had
been sober. The poet was interested in pre-Columbian history, he had
always had a yearning for Mexico, and he was particularly taken with
Croydon’s notion that the Toltec, Mayan, and finally the Aztec religions
were shadowy reflections of historical events that took place when
mankind inhabited the Antarctic, when that region was steamy carbon¬
iferous forest. Those jaguar gods and feathered serpents which or¬
namented the temples had become highly stylized and symbolic,
Croydon said, but long long ago, when man and dinosaur and other
indefinable races coexisted at the bottom of the world, the first of these
carvings and paintings had simply been attempts to represent literal

Weird Tales 115

appearance. Those creatures, and many others of less producible aspect,
had lived among us. Or rather, we had lived among them, as animal labor
supply and as food source.

Crane discounted most of Croydon’s notions. He did not believe, for
example, that dinosaurs could have been intelligent warm-blooded
creatures who had attempted to dislodge the alien gods who ruled among
them. He did not believe the dinosaurs had died because their adversaries
had infected them with an artificial bacterium which had spread like
wildfire, wiping out every major saurian species in three generations.
But he was fascinated by Croydon’s accounts of tribal religions in South
and Central America, caught up by the exotic imagery and descriptions
of ritual. Croydon was especially excited by an obscure tribe inhabiting
the upper reaches of the Amazon who worshipped a panoply of gods they
called collectively Dzhaimbu. Or perhaps they worshipped but one god
who could take different shapes. Much was unclear. But it was clear that
Croydon regarded Dzhaimbu as the most anciently rooted of religions,
in a direct decent from mankind’s prehistoric Antarctic experiences.

Crane was impressed too by another of Croydon’s ideas. This scholar
disagreed vehemently with Darwin’s charming theory that man had
learned speech by imitating the mating calls of birds. Not so, said
Croydon; man was originally a vocally taciturn animal like the horse and
the gorilla, and like horse and gorilla uttered few sounds except under
duress of extreme pain or terror. But these sounds they learned to voice
quite regularly when Dzhaimbu inflicted upon them unspeakable atroc¬
ities, practices which Croydon could not think of without retching.
Human speech was merely the elaboration of an original shriek of terror.

“ ’S a shame. Sterling,” Crane said, “that you can’t board a ship and
go down to the jungle and investigate. I bet you’d turn up some
interesting stuff.”

Croydon smiled. “Oh, I wouldn’t bother with the jungle. I’d go to the
Antarctic and look for direct archeological evidence.”

Crane took another swallow from his tumbler of neat gin. His eyes
were slightly unfocused and his face was flushed and his neck red in the
soft open collar. “Shame you can’t go to the South Pole then, if that’s
where you want to go.”

“No, I shouldn’t make a very able sailor, I think,” Croydon said. “But,
after all, there are other ways to travel than by crawling over the globe
like a termite.” And now he launched into a description of what he called
spatial emplacement, by which means a man sitting in his room might
visit any part of the Earth. All that was required was delicate manipula¬
tion of complex and tenuous mathematical formulae, prediction of solar

116 Fred Chappell

winds, polar magnetic fluxions, cosmic ray vectors, and so forth. He
began to pour out a rubble of numbers and Greek letters, all of which
Crane disregarded, suspecting that they’d struck now upon the richest
vein of his friend’s lunacy. Croydon’s idea seemed to be that every
geographical location in the universe could be imagined as being located
on the surface of its individual sphere, and that the problem was simply
to turn these spheres until the desired points matched and touched.
Touched, but did not conjoin; there would be disaster if they conjoined.
The worse complication was that these mathematical spheres, once freed
of Euclidean space, were also free in time. One might arrive to inspect
Antarctica at the time he wished, which would be pleasant indeed; or he
might arrive in the future, uncountable millennia from now. And that
would be dangerous as well as inconvenient.

But all this murmur of number and mathematical theory had lulled
Crane. He was asleep in the club chair. Croydon woke him gently and
suggested that he might like to go home.

“Yeah, maybe I better,” Crane said. He scratched his head, disheveling
again his spiky hair. “But say. Sterling, I don’t now about this travel by
arithmetic. Better to get a berth on a ship and sail around and see the
birds wheel overhead and the slow islands passing.” The thought struck
his enthusiasm. “That’s what we’ll do one of these days. We’ll get on a
ship and go see these jungles.”

“Good night. Hart,” Croydon said.

This impulsive voyage was never to take place, of course, Crane’s
poetry had begun to attract important critical notice, and he soon moved
to New York in order to further his melancholy but highly distinguished
literary career.

Croydon remained behind to pursue his researches ever more inten¬
sively. He was quite lost sight of to the world. Loveman would occasion¬
ally stop by to call but was not admitted.

It was on one of these infrequent visits that he felt a strangeness. The
hall leading to Croydon’s room seemed chilly and the air around the door
very cold indeed. And the door was sweating cold water, had begun to
collect ice around the edges. The brass nameplate was covered with hard
frost, obliterating Croydon’s name.

Loveman knocked and knocked again and heard no sound within but
a low inhuman moan. He tried the icy knob, which finally turned, but
could not force the door inward. He braced his feet, set his shoulder
against the door and strained, but was only able to get it open for the
space of an inch or two. The noise increased—it was the howling of

Weird Tales 117

wind—and a blast of numbing air swept over him and he saw in that
small space only an area of white, a patch of snow. Then the wind
thumped the door shut.

Loveman was at a loss. None of his usual friends was nearby to aid
him, and he would not call upon others. He belonged to a circle in which
there were many secrets they did not wish the larger world to know. He
returned to his rooms on the lower floor, dressed himself in a winter
woolen jacket and scarf and toboggan. After a brief search he found his
gloves. He took a heavy ornamental brass poker from the hearth and
returned to Croydon’s door.

This time he set himself firmly and, when he had effected a slight
opening, thrust the poker into the space and levered it back. The poker
began to bend with the strain and he could feel the coldness of it through
his gloves. Then the wind caught the edge of the door and flung it back
suddenly and Croydon found himself staring into a snowy plain swept
over by fierce Antarctic wind.

It was all very puzzling. Loveman could see into this windstorm and
feel some force of the wind and cold, but he knew that what he felt was
small indeed as compared to the fury of the weather he could see into.
Nor could he advance physically into this landscape. He could march
forward, pushing against the wind, he could feel himself going forward,
but he did not advance so much as an inch into that uproar of ice and
snow.

It is in another space, he thought, but close, very close, to my own.

He could see into it but he could not travel there. In fact, with the wild
curtains of snow blowing he could see little, but what he could see was
terrible enough.

There, seemingly not twenty feet from him, sat Croydon at his desk.
The scholar was wearing only his burgundy velvet dressing gown and
gray flannel trousers and bedroom slippers. The habitual dark glasses
concealed his eyes, but the rest of his face was drawn into a tortured
grimace.

Of course Loveman shouted out Croydon Croydon! knowing it was
useless.

He could not tell if his friend was still alive. He did not think that he
could be. Certainly if he were in the same space as this Antarctic
temperature, he must have died a quick but painful death. Perhaps he
was not in that space but in a space like Loveman’s own, touching but
not conjoining this polar location. Yet the Antarctic space intervened
between them, an impassable barrier.

He wished now that he had paid more attention when Croydon had

118 Fred Chappell

spoken of his mathematical ideas. But Loveman, like Crane, had no
patience with, no talent for, numbers. He could never have understood.
And now those pages of painstaking calculation had blown away, stiff as
steel blades, over the blue ice sheets.

He thought that if he could not walk forward then he might crawl, but
when he went to his knees he found himself suspended a couple of feet
above the plane of the floor. Something was wrong with the space he
was in. He stood, dizzily, and stepped down to the floor again, and the
descent was as hard a struggle as climbing an Alpine precipice.

There was no way to get to Croydon, and he wondered if it would be
possible to heave a rope to him. If he could find a rope.

But there was no way to reach the scholar. He had begun to recede in
space, growing smaller and more distant, as if caught in the wrong end
of a telescope. And the polar wind began to effect a bad transformation.
The dressing gown was ripped from Croydon’s body and he was black¬
ening like a gardenia thrown into a fire. His skin and the layers of his
flesh began to curl up and peel away, petal by petal. A savage gust tore
off his scalp and the blood that welled there froze immediately, a skullcap
of onyx. Soon he would be only a skeleton, tumbled knob and joint over
the driving snow, but Loveman was spared this spectacle. The frozen
figure receded more quickly and a swirl of ice-grains blotted away the
vision. Croydon was gone.

Loveman made his way into the hall, walking backward. His mouth
was dully open and he found that he was sweating and that the sweat
had begun to ice his clothing.

There came a crash as of thunder, the smell of ozone, and the Antarctic
scene disappeared from the room and there was nothing there. Literally,
nothing; no furniture, no walls, no floor. The door with Croydon’s
nameplate hung over a blue featureless abyss. There was nothing, no
real space at all.

Loveman gathered his courage, reached in, and pulled the door closed.
He went quietly down the hall, determined to get back into his own room
before others showed up. He did not want to answer questions; he did
not want anyone to know what he knew. He wanted to go to his room
and sit down and think alone and reaffirm his sanity.

The disappearance of Croydon and of that part of the apartment
building caused some little public stir. The recluse had no relatives, but
scientists were interested as well as the police. Loveman avoided as best
he could any official notice, and in a few months the event was largely
forgotten, since the scholar’s room returned to its original state, every¬
thing restored but Croydon himself.

Weird Tales 119

But the occurrence was not forgotten by the circle of Loveman’s
friends. For them it was a matter of great concern. They feared that
Croydon’s experiment had called attention to themselves. Would not
those alien presences whose histories they had been studiously examin¬
ing now turn their regard toward Cleveland? Had he not disturbed the
web of space-time as a fly disturbs a spiderweb? It was true that they
were indifferent to mankind, to species and individual alike. But there
were some researchers who thought, as Lovecraft did, that the ancient
race was planning a regeneration of its destiny and would act to keep its
existence secret until the moment was ripe. The powers of these beings
were immense; they could destroy where and when they pleased, as
casually as a man crushes out a cigarette in an ashtray.

Loveman wrote about Croydon to Crane in New York, but his reference
was veiled, seemingly offhand. “You have heard about C, I take it. We
are all aware. Always good to keep your guard up, old chum. Word to
the wise meanwhile. I wonder, you wonder.”

It was actually at this early juncture that it all began to come apart;
though the pursuit among the seers and poets was leisurely by human
measure, it was relentless.

Lovecraft died in 1937, in painful loneliness. The official medical
report listed the cause as intestinal cancer. Hart Crane’s more famous
death had taken place five years earlier, the celebrated leap into the sea.

The men had since met twice again, during the period of what
Lovecraft had called his “New York exile.” He was a little shocked at the
changes in Crane’s physical condition. “He looks more weather-beaten
& drink-puffed than he did in the past,” Lovecraft wrote to his aunt,
“tragically drink-riddled but now eminent.” He predicted that Crane
would find it difficult to write another major work. “After about three
hours of acute & intelligent argument poor Crane left—to hunt up a new
supply of whiskey & banish reality for the rest of the night!”

Lovecraft records this encounter as taking place May 24,1930. They
were not alone and had no opportunity to talk privately, so that Crane
would not have told the other what he had learned from Loveman of the
circumstances of Croydon’s death. He could not apprise Lovecraft that
he alone was inheritor to Croydon’s secret knowledge and that his
identity must necessarily be known to that being, or series of beings,
Dzhaimbu. He spoke of leaving New York and moving to Charleston, but
Lovecraft did not pick up the hint, merely agreeing that such a move

120 Fred Chappell

might be beneficial. Perhaps Crane’s gallantry prevented his placing the
other in danger.

Another interpretation is possible. We may guess that Crane did
communicate some of his information to the horror story writer. It is
just at this period that Lovecraft’s mythos began to take its more
coherent and credible shape in such works as “The Shadow Over
Innsmouth” and “The Dreams in the Witch House.” Certainly both
Lovecraft and Loveman remarked that Crane now lived in a state of
haunted terror, wild and frightful, dependent upon alcohol to keep
his fear manageable. Crane must have known that he was being
pursued—the signs were unmistakable—and decided to face the
terror on its own ground. For this reason he plotted to get the
Guggenheim grant which would take him to Mexico.

But it was too late, alcohol and drugs had disordered his nervous
system, his strength was gone. On the voyage to Mexico he met the
celebrated bacteriologist. Dr. Hans Zinsser, and concluded that he was
an agent of Dzhaimbu sent to infect humanity by means of typhus-ridden
rats. Zinsser’s motives in dumping infected rats into the harbor at Havana
remain unknown, but it is hardly probable that Crane’s suspicions were
correct.

In Mexico the poet’s behavior was uncontrolled and incomprehensible,
a series of shocking and violent incidents that landed him often in jail
and caused his friends to distrust any sentence he uttered. His decision
to meet the terror face to face was disastrous; he could not stand up
under the strain. No man could. And his further decision—to keep his
knowledge and theories secret so as not to endanger others—was a worse
disaster.

In the end, he fled, unable to face the prospect of coming close to the
source of the horror. The voyage home began with dreams and visions
so terrifying that he could not bear to close his eyes and stayed awake
drinking continuously. Embarrassing episodes followed which he was
numbly aware of but past caring about. On April 27, 1932, Hart Crane
jumped from the railing of the Orizaba. The sea received him and the
immense serpentine manifestation of Dzhaimbu, which had been follow¬
ing in the unseen depths of the water since the ship departed, devoured
him.

This fabulous shadow only the sea keeps.

It is inevitable that we read these sad histories as we do, as a catalogue
of missed opportunities and broken communications. A present genera¬
tion righteously decries the errors of its forefathers. But it is unlikely that

Weird Tales 121

any human effort would have changed the course of events. There would
still have come about the reawakening of Dzhaimbu and the other worse
gods, under whose charnel dominion we now suffer and despair.

The Wardrobe

Jovan Panich

Jovan Panich was horn January 24, 1960 in Birmingham, England,
where he currently resides. Of himself, Panich writes: “My mother is
English and my father Yugoslav, hence the strange name. I’ve always had
a love of science fiction, fantasy and horror, and when I was young I’d
hunt all the local magazine shops for Marvel comics, which were superior
to anything being published in Britain. I then moved on to books without
pictures and read every Moorcock book in print. Other authors followed,
Howard, Lovecraft, Leiber, and Tolkien to name but a few.” His current
favorites include Ramsey Campbell and Stephen King, whose works have
influenced his own writing.

Panich has been writing since he was about seven, but only in the last
few years has he written anything with a serious intention to see it in
print. “The Wardrobe” was originally submitted to Mary Danby for one
of the Fontana Book of Horror Stories. Panich later sent it to Lari
Davidson, editor of the Canadian magazine, Potboiler, who had Panich
revise the story several times before accepting it. Panich has had two other
stories published in Potboiler, and another, “Miala,” is set for a forth¬
coming issue of Undinal Songs.

The car came to a halt beside the curb. The wipers juddered on the
windscreen in shivering arcs, wiping away the last few drops of rain that
still fell from a sky the color of iron.

The doors swung open and a man, a woman, and two boys climbed
out. They all were dressed in black and looked uncomfortable in the
stiffly formal clothes. The youngest boy pulled at the collar of his shirt,
trying to loosen its grip on his throat. He was guided gently toward the
door of the house by his mother. She wore a small black velvet hat with
a veil that could not hide her eyes. They were puffed and red with crying.
She inserted a key into the lock and pushed open the door.

“Go upstairs and get changed, Andrew. We’ll be in in a minute.” She
spoke in a voice that was little more than a whisper.

123

124 Jovan Panich

Andrew clambered up the stairs on all fours, glad to be allowed to
change out of the uncomfortable clothes. He went into his room and sat
on the bed, tugged off his tie and then fumbled with the top button of
his shirt for a long time before he managed to undo it.

Andrew sat looking out of the window at the sky still heavy with
clouds. It had rained steadily during Granny’s funeral. It had been so
strange and disorienting. All the flowers, bright and colorful, and the
people so drab, black. There had been a man who had said some strange
words that Andrew didn’t understand, in a slow, solemn voice, but was
only pretending to be sad. And Andrew had looked around at all the
people, his uncles and aunts and cousins. They all stood silent and
unfamiliar, so that he was uncertain if they really were the people they
were supposed to be.

After the man had finished speaking, they had lowered the coffin into
the hole in the ground. Andrew had watched fascinated as the coffin
descended jerkily on the ropes, thumping lightly as it hit the wet earth
at the bottom. He wondered what it must be like to be in the dark cold
ground, trapped in a shiny wooden box. Why did Granny have to be put
in the ground like that, with all the worms and beetles and slugs? What
had she done wrong?

He remembered Granny, a kindly old woman who sat in her chair by
the fire and gave him sweets when he visited her. He could never
remember her being bad, not even when he had broken the blue china
teacup. Why, then, was Granny put into the coffin? He had asked his
father when they left the graveside and were walking back to the car.

“Because she’s dead, Andrew. Sleeping for a long time.”

Andrew knew what being dead was like. It was like the cat he had seen
near the rubbish heap, all stiff and covered in maggots, with blood and
slimy stuff on its face and a smell that made him feel sick. Would Granny
be like that when she woke up? He thought of himself being picked up
and kissed by a mouth that was cold and soft and wet like squashed
worms.

He felt scared then and was glad that Granny was in her shiny box
under the ground and a long way away. He hoped it would be a long,
long time before she woke up, and perhaps she would have forgotten
him by then.

He finished taking off his best clothes, pulled on his jeans and the
yellow t-shirt with a red racing car on it. Then he slipped his feet into a
pair of sneakers that had once been white, and with a look of concentra¬
tion on his face, slowly tied the laces.

He heard the front door close and the rest of the family make their

The Wardrobe 125

way into the lounge. Andrew picked up his suit and went over to the big
wardrobe in the comer of his room, carefully hung the suit on its plastic
hanger, and closed the door with a sharp click. He stepped back, looking
at the wardrobe as if he were only now seeing it properly for the first
time.

The wardrobe dominated the small room. It was out of place. All the
rest of the furniture was simple and modem, plain and unpretentious.
But the wardrobe belonged to a time past, an Edwardian, or perhaps
Victorian, setting, where all the colors were rich and dark, and the air
heavy with the musty scent of long-dry lavender.

It was made of oak, stained such a deep brown so as to be almost black.
The twin doors had brass handles and were covered in fluting and carving
that was cut deep into the wood, with fluid designs of entwined leaves
and vines that seemed more like writhing serpents ... or things found
far beneath the ground.

It stood in front of him, shiny and dark, like the coffin they had buried
with Granny inside. But this coffin wasn’t under a layer of heavy soil
pressed firmly in its place, it was here with him, in his room. What if
there was something else inside, apart from his clothes? Something that
had been asleep for a very long time ... but was now waking up?

Inside the wardrobe, Andrew’s jacket slid from the hanger and
slithered down the inside of the door like the feeble movements of an
old woman.

Andrew turned and fled from the room, almost falling down the stairs
in his haste to reach his parents. He flung himself into his mother’s arms
as she sat on the sofa by the fire.

He sobbed and gasped, unable to speak for a long time. At last the
words came. “She’s not dead now. She’s woken up, but I shut the door.
Mummy, I’m scared!”

“Andrew! What are you talking about?” his father snapped. The
funeral of his wife’s mother had already been enough of a strain without
any more worries.

“In the wardrobe! She’s in the wardrobe!” Andrew almost screamed.

“Who’s in the wardrobe? The cat? Is it the cat stuck in the wardrobe?”
Andrew’s father asked.

“No! Granny! Or maybe somebody else, crawling in the bottom of the
wardrobe. Maybe they were dead, but now they’ve woken up.”

His own confusion calmed him, as he tried to express his thoughts
with what words he knew.

Andrew’s mother looked at him, and then put her head in her hands
and began to cry softly.

126 Jovan Panich

“They’re dead. Why do I have to be reminded?” Her voice was hardly
more than a whisper.

“Madeleine. Don’t cry, darling,” Andrew’s father said gently, then
turning to his eldest son, said, “Stay with your mother, Gary. Andrew,
let’s go upstairs.”

He took firm hold of Andrew’s wrist and led him back to his bedroom.
With a savage pull he opened the doors of the wardrobe and made
Andrew look inside.

“See? Nothing but your clothes, including your best jacket screwed up
like a dish cloth.” He picked it up and replaced it on the hanger, doing
up one of the buttons to hold it in place. “Now let’s go back downstairs,
and not another word to your mother, she’s been through enough these
past few days. You and Gary can go and play in the other room with your
toys, quietly mind, no noisy games.”

As the two boys walked meekly past their father in the hall, Gary, who
was eight, and as curious as a kitten, asked, “What did Mum mean when
she said they were dead?”

“Her mother and father of course.” He answered quietly, but he looked
away even as he spoke and quickly stepped back into the lounge, shutting
the door firmly.

Peter could still picture that day, a bright morning in early August. He
had decided to decorate the spare room in readiness for the baby
Madeleine was carrying. A little brother or sister for Gary. He had been
moving the wardrobe out on to the landing, a slow and difficult job
because of the wardrobe’s size and weight. Madeleine had come out of
the bedroom, seen him struggling, and asked if she could help. He had
laughed, and replied, “In your condition?” and patted the prominent
lump. And then he had lifted the wardrobe up at one end, slid it along
the carpet. Somehow he lost his balance, stumbled, and it had toppled
forward, pinning Madeleine against the wall. She screamed, a cry that
had made his heart freeze. When he pulled the wardrobe away he
thought she was dead, there was so much blood. The child had been a
little girl.

Now the memory had been reawakened, and Peter wondered, deep
down inside in a small and secret place, if there was perhaps something
evil about the wardrobe.

The months passed, and the incident of the wardrobe was all but
forgotten by Andrew. He still felt nervous about being in the room alone
sometimes, and he would then have to ope'n the wardrobe doors and
slide the clothes to one side. After he had carried out this inspection and

The Wardrobe 127

decided that there was nothing hiding inside, he was quite happy to stay
in the room. And after a time it became more like a ritual, akin to not
stepping on the cracks between paving stones, devoid of any real
meaning.

One evening in late autumn, Andrew was playing in his room with his
electric train set. It was almost dark inside the room, only a hint of the
afternoon still lingered in the patch of sky outside the window, but
Andrew hadn’t switched on the light because his new train had tiny
headlights and illuminated carriages. In the gloom it looked almost like
a real train as it hurtled round the track with its headlamps glinting on
the rails.

Something made him turn, some movement on the edge of his vision.
He looked at the wardrobe. The doors were half open. In the space
between the clothes and the bottom of the wardrobe he could see a head.
The face was gray and crumpled with years and there were only black
patches where the eyes and mouth should be. It leered at him.

He began to scream, too frightened to run to the light switch. He kept
on screaming, and the train went round and round the track relentlessly.

His father ran in and switched on the light. “Andrew! What is it? Have
you hurt yourself?”

“In the wardrobe. Daddy. A ghost! A ghost!” He pointed wildly at the
wardrobe, at any moment expecting the thing to come shambling out.

His father padded over to the wardrobe in his worn brown slippers
and pulled the door open wider. Andrew was ready to scream again but
he saw his dread apparition revolve into a gray shirt and the toecaps of
a pair of shiny black shoes. They lay at the bottom of the wardrobe, so
mundane and natural in the clear electric light. He felt foolish.

His mother ran into the room. Her eyes were filled with concern.
“What’s happened? Is he all right? Are you all right, Andrew?”

She saw the open doors of the wardrobe. The concern vanished from
her eyes and was replaced by fear. “It’s that thing again. That bloody
wardrobe! I know it is! It’s ...”

Quickly Peter rushed to her and put his arm around her shoulders.
“Andrew’s okay. He just got himself caught up with his train set. He got
frightened, but I’ve seen to it. There’s nothing to get worked up about.”

Madeleine nodded. “I’m sorry. I thought...”

“Shush. Don’t worry. Now go downstairs and finish getting tea ready.
We’re all starving.”

He forced a smile, and slapped her playfully.

As soon as she was gone the smile vanished. He gestured to Andrew

128 Jovan Panich

to switch off the train. Slowly Andrew stood up and sat on the edge of
the bed. His father sat down beside him.

“Now listen to me, Andrew, because I’m only going to say this once,
and then we’re not going to mention it ever again. Understand?”

Andrew wet his lips with his tongue, and whispered, “Yes, Dad.”

‘You saw what happened to your mother when she thought something
had frightened you. You could see how scared and worried she got. It
made her cry and feel bad. I know you love her and don’t want her to be
upset...”

“It was the wardrobe. Dad. It frightened me again. I thought there was
something inside it... like last time.”

“For God’s sake, Andrew! Don’t be stupid! It’s only a piece of furniture,
like the table and chairs. You’re not frightened of those, are you?”

Andrew lowered his eyes and said nothing.

“Don’t you understand that you’re frightening your mother? The two
of you are scaring one another to death, feeding on one another’s fears.
It has got to stop. It will stop. Understand?”

“Yes, Dad.” Andrew answered in a small voice.

Peter, remembering that he was talking to his youngest son, who
hadn’t yet reached his seventh birthday, sighed and tousled Andrew’s
hair. “Okay, son. Let’s forget all about it and go and have something to
eat.”

Andrew did indeed try and forget all about the wardrobe, and for a
few weeks all was well. December came, and with it a cold spell. A thick
frost on the lawn crackled like newspaper when Andrew walked on it,
and ice patterns covered the kitchen window when he got up for school.
Christmas was fast approaching, bringing with it a fervent excitement.
He hoped that he would get the radio-controlled sports car he had asked
for. He would be the envy of all the other boys in his class.

Each night when he got into bed he thought that another day was gone
and Christmas had moved a little closer. He was happy and excited. Sleep
did not come easily.

Sixteen days before Christmas he had a terrifying nightmare.

He was walking with his brother Gary on the way to school. Gary was
telling him how well he had done in the long jump the previous day. “I
managed this tremendous leap—must have been nearly ten feet—I
thought I was flying.”

The two of them stepped through the doors leading to the classrooms.
But they were suddenly in Andrew’s bedroom.

Gary seemed unaware of the transformation, he continued walking.
He stopped at the wardrobe with his back toward it. The doors swung

The Wardrobe 129

slowly and silently open. Andrew tried to speak, but his mouth seemed
as if it were filled with a wad of cotton, and fear crushed his ribs. In his
arms there was suddenly a great slab of cold granite, a gravestone, its
inscription weathered and worn into an unreadable shadow. The stone
was covered with lichen and damp earth ... and something else. Wrig¬
gling maggots, fat and white, writhed blindly toward his fingers.

With a shuddering moan of loathing, Andrew threw the thing away
from him. Gary’s eyes went wide with horror as the heavy stone sailed
toward him. It thudded into his chest. He fell backwards into the gaping
blackness of the wardrobe, where something waited . . . The doors
slapped shut.

Andrew woke up. The door of the wardrobe swung shut with a soft
click that seemed to echo like a gunshot. Terror returned like a cat
pouncing on its prey. He almost screamed, but his body was rigid,
constricted by a breath that couldn’t escape.

After long minutes had passed he found the courage to slide his hand
out from under the protective covering of the blankets and switch on the
lamp. He wanted to call' for his mother, but he remembered what his

father had said to him. He knew that he would have to remain silent.

*

Andrew lay in his bed, staring at the wardrobe for a long time before
uneasy sleep at last came to him.

In the comforting light of a bright, cold day, Andrew brooded on his
nightmare, going over it again and again. Had it happened? Had the
wardrobe doors swung shut when he had woken? He was certain the
doors had been closed when he had gone to bed, and they were obviously
closed now. The only possible answer was that he had still been half
asleep after the nightmare had ended. One second asleep and dreaming
the doors swinging shut, the next awake, and seeing the dark shape of
the wardrobe in the beam of moonlight streaming through the gap in the
curtains.

That afternoon he found Gary in the garden with his bicycle upside
down. Gary was standing on the handlebars in an attempt to straighten
them. Andrew rested his back against the fence and watched his brother.

Gary turned round and saw his brother shivering and watching. “You
wouldn’t feel cold if you were doing something instead of just watching.
Stand on the other end of the ’bars and bounce up and down. With both
of us together there might be enough weight to straighten it.”

The two of them grunted and gasped, and eventually the metal bent
back.

“Phew! That was hard work. How’d you manage to bend it like that?”

“I’d just finished delivering the papers and was on my way home, then

130 Jouan Panich

I hit a patch of ice on the comer of Bell’s Lane. I went halfway across the
road before I could grab the brakes and the bike went straight over and
I landed on the handlebars.”

He rubbed his chest.

“It doesn’t half hurt. I bet I’ve got a great big bruise.”

Andrew stared at his brother for a long time. “Gaz. I had a bad dream
last night.”

“That’s nice. Get chased by a Dalek? Or was it a lump of man-eating
purple jelly with fangs?” He made a face, showing his teeth.

“It wasn’t anything like that. I dreamt that you fell inside the wardrobe
in my bedroom...”

“Sounds really frightening,” interrupted Gary.

“There was something in there ... waiting. I don’t know what, I never
saw it, but it killed you,” he finished lamely, unable to convey the sense
of horror he felt.

“But you didn’t fall into the wardrobe. I had this gravestone, it was all
covered in maggots. I threw it away and it hit you ... in the chest.”

The laughter vanished from Gary’s face. “You’re lying. You made it up,
didn’t you? You’re trying to scare me just like you scare Mum, with all
that rubbish about the wardrobe. Well I’m not going to listen!” Fear was
in his eyes, and he turned away, lest Andrew should see it. “I’m going in
the house!”

Andrew stood watching as his elder brother walked away. He won¬
dered if Gary would tell his mother and father. He doubted it. Gary
wouldn’t admit his fear even to Andrew, much less their parents. Andrew
wondered if he should say something himself, but what could he say that
wouldn’t frighten his mother and enrage his father? Nothing. The only
thing he could do was to forget all about the matter.

When Andrew was eleven, his bedroom changed. New carpet and
curtains and wallpaper in mute pastel shades were exchanged for the
bright, boisterous colors of childhood. Books and records replaced the
toys. The electric train was long gone, broken and discarded, but the
wardrobe was still there ... unchanged.

The wardrobe now filled Andrew with terror whenever he was alone
in his room. He began putting a chair in front of the doors each night, to
make certain they could never come open while he was asleep. Gary
never mentioned the nightmare again, not even to ridicule Andrew with
it. In fact, it seemed to Andrew that all the family made a special point
of not mentioning the wardrobe in any way at all.

He picked a moment when his father was alone. Gary was out with

The Wardrobe 131

his friends and his mother in town doing some shopping. He went into
the lounge where his father sat in an armchari reading the newspaper.

Peter looked up as Andrew came in, saw by the look on his son’s face
that he wanted to ask something, and put his newspaper on the floor
after carefully folding it in half.

“Dad, I wanted to ask you if I could have a desk in my room, so I’ll

have somewhere quiet to sit and do my homework.”

“A desk? Well, I don’t know. Your room’s not very big to start with.

Where are you going to put a desk?”

“It could go by the wall, between the door and the window.”

Peter considered this for a moment, mentally measuring the length of
the wall. “But what about the old wardrobe? It just about fills the space
along that wall.”

“We could have it taken out and put a proper fitted wardrobe in the
alcove. That’s what Darren Slater’s got. He’s got a desk and his room’s a
bit smaller than mine.”

“Oh! I see it now,” Andrew’s father laughed. “But a desk would be
useful, especially as you get older and have to do a lot more serious
studying. I’ll see what I can do about it. And with a bit of luck, you’ll get
a desk like Darren’s or maybe better.”

“Thanks, Dad!” said Andrew as he turned and all but swaggered out
of the room.

Three days later, Peter went up to his youngest son’s room. He found
Andrew sitting on the bed, half-heartedly reading through his notes on
the French Revolution for a coming exam.

Peter walked over to the wardrobe and stood with one hand resting
on the polished wood. Andrew lifted his eyes from his book and nodded.

“There’s a young bloke at the factory who’s just got married and moved
into a house in Waverley Road.”

Andrew nodded.

“Well he’s a bit short of money at the moment, not surprisingly, and
he’s looking around for furniture on the cheap. So I told him we’d got an
old wardrobe he could have, if he collected it himself.”

“What did he say. Dad?” Andrew asked, pushing his book under the
bed.

“Oh. He said he’d have it. Said he’d be round Sunday afternoon with
a mate of his who’s got a Transit van.”

Andrew swung round until he could see the wardrobe properly. At last
it was going. But still he had to suppress a shudder.

The next day was Friday, and that afternoon when school was over.

132 Jovan Panich

Andrew and his mother took all the clothes out of the wardrobe and hung
them in the white fitted wardrobe in his parents’ room.

“It’s a bit of a squeeze,” said his mother, as she pushed her husband’s
gray three-piece suit along the rail in order to slide Andrew’s duffle coat
into the narrow space. “But we’ll manage until we get you a new one.”

After tea, Andrew and his father spent an hour wrestling the heavy
wardrobe from its place against the wall and downstairs. The staircase
was narrow and curved back on itself, so there was a lot of pushing and
pulling and shouted instructions before they got the wardrobe out into
the back garden.

Andrew’s father brushed his hair out of his eyes with a dusty hand.
“We could have done with Gary to give us a hand. This bloody thing’s
heavy enough to give me a hernia!”

Andrew rubbed his hands down the front of his jeans; there were two
red lines across his palms where the edge of the wardrobe had dug into
the soft flesh. But again they each took one end of the wardrobe. Like
some ungainly giant crab they made their way into the shed with short,
wobbly steps.

“That should do it,” gasped Andrew, blowing air through his teeth with
a soft whistling sound.

“Yep. You’re right,” his father said, as he tucked his shirt into his
trousers. “It’ll be okay in here, ready for Harry when he comes to collect
it. Nice and close to the gate. I expect it’d rain if we left it outside. Come
on then, let’s go and see if your mother’s got any orange juice in the
fridge.”

Andrew didn’t follow him back indoors immediately. He lingered in
the shed, studying the wardrobe. Suddenly, it seemed as dark and evil
to him as when he had been a little boy. It was almost as if it were a living
thing. Now that it was in the shed it was like a dangerous animal in a
cage, trapped, but not nearly as deadly. He had the urge to taunt it.

“So you’re going at last. After all these years of turning round with a
gasp when I thought some hideous creature was going to leap out from
inside you. I won’t wake up in the middle of the night and see you
looming there like the Gates of Hell!”

He raised his fist in a gesture of triumph ... and the wardrobe gave a
squealing creak, almost as if it were giving voice to its impotent fury.

Andrew’s courage deserted him then. He ran out of the shed, slamming
the door behind him and shot the bolt. He rushed indoors, his heart
thundering madly against his ribs.

That night he experienced his nightmare again; the same nightmare

The Wardrobe 133

that had chilled his soul countless times before. But this time it was much
worse. This time there were faces on the sides of the wardrobe, bom
from the patterning of the wood. They were demon faces, tattered and
ragged, as if they had been sculpted in the wood but had run before
drying, like candle wax. When Gary fell inside and the doors closed,
awful crunching sounds could be heard, along with Gary’s screams. They
rose to a squealing howl which made Andrew’s stomach and bladder
convulse.

From the demon mouths blood began to pour, running down the sides
of the wardrobe.

Andrew awoke, almost mad with fear. He scrambled out of bed making
a low moaning noise. After long agonizing seconds of fumbling, his
fingers found the light switch. He stood in the harsh brightness feeling
ill. He felt a cold dampness and found that he had wet himself in his
terror.

Andrew was sick as soon as he reached the bathroom. He made certain
some of the vomit went down the front of his pajamas, hiding the stain
of urine. His mother caine running out of her bedroom and fussed over
him.

“There, there, my poppet. Feeling better now?”

Andrew nodded, his face pale and sweat-streaked.

She wiped his face with a wet flannel and gave him a glass of water
to drink. Andrew held the glass in his trembling hands, and the rim
clinked against his teeth.

After he had changed, Andrew went back to his room and got into bed,
but only after his mother had agreed to stay with him. She sat on a chair
beside his bed and held his hand. A few minutes later his father came in.
He stifled a yawn.

“Two o’clock in the morning, you pick the best time to be sick,” he
said, tying the belt of a faded red dressing gown around his waist. “What
have you been up to?”

Andrew’s fear made him reckless. He began telling his parents about
his nightmare. When he had finished, his father stared at him with an
angry look on his face.

“Don’t you think it’s about bloody time you forgot about that thing?
You’re not a little kid anymore! I swear to God, you must be barmy.”

“Peter!” cried Madeleine, shocked by her husband’s harsh words.
“You’re not helping him by shouting at him like this.”

Peter said nothing, but stalked out of the room, slamming the door
behind him. Madeleine put her hand on Andrew’s brow and said gently,
“You mustn’t worry about what your father says. He doesn’t really mean

134 Jovan Panich

it, you know. He’s just worried about you, because he loves you.
Everything will be better when that wretched wardrobe’s taken away.”

Andrew nodded, and buried his head in the pillow. He felt wretched.

The next morning Andrew got up early, glad to be out of the confines
of his bedroom. Though the wardrobe was no longer there its presence
seemed stronger. He gingerly stepped round the dark patch of carpet

with the dirty line around it, the spot where the wardrobe had stood.

He went into the lounge and switched on the television. It was the

Banana Splits Show, a repeat, but he didn’t mind.

From the other room he could hfear the sound of his mother and Gary
talking. He couldn’t quite catch what they said, but he somehow felt they
were discussing him.

Gary came in and sat down on the arm of the settee. He began to twist
himself from side to side, causing the settee to lift off the ground.

“Hey! Stop that, I’ll tell Dad!” Andrew snapped indignantly as he
lurched forward.

“Dad’s not here. He’s gone fishing. He couldn’t bear to be in the same
house as his barmy kid.”

Andrew said nothing.

“I heard everything last night. You still believe all that rubbish about
the wardrobe, don’t you? I remember when you tried to scare me with
your stupid story. ‘Oooh! Gary, there’s something in the wardrobe, Gary!
It must be the bogeyman, Gary! I’m scared, Gary!”’ he pitched his voice
high and childlike.

Andrew still didn’t answer, but he began to turn red with embarrass¬
ment.

Sensing his brother’s discomfort, Gary went on, “I bet you were so
scared you wet yourself!”

“’Course I didn’t! And anyway, I was only scared of it when I was a
little kid. It’ll be gone for good soon.” He couldn’t disguise the sense of
relief he felt. Gary saw the fear he was trying to hide and said, “Come
on outside, baby brother, and I’ll show you there’s no monster in the
wardrobe waiting to get you. That’s if you’re not too frightened.”

He left the challenge hanging in mid-air like a noose.

“Let’s not bother, Gaz. I’m watching the telly.” Andrew tried to turn
his brother’s thoughts to something else, but Gary was determined to
extract the fullest enjoyment from his brother’s phobia.

“You’re scared! Chicken! You’re shit-scared!” He began slapping the
back of Andrew’s head in time to his chanting.

Andrew lost his temper. He swung a fist at his brother, but Gary easily

The Wardrobe 135

■v

blocked the wild swing and pulled Andrew onto the floor. He held him

down with his knees on Andrew’s shoulders.

“I’m telling you, you haven’t got the bottle to go out there!” He
slammed Andrew’s head against the floor.

“Yes I have!” screamed Andrew, almost crying.

“Okay then, let’s go!” Gary let go of his younger brother. Andrew stood
up, rubbing the back of his head. Reluctantly, he followed Gary out into
the back garden.

They halted in front of the shed, but only for a moment. Gary slid the
bolt back, opened the door and stepped inside. Andrew stood outside
peering in. Gary strode up to the wardrobe and pulled open the doors.
It seemed to Andrew that the interior was filled with smokey darkness.

He couldn’t see the back of the wardrobe.

“See, I told you there was nothing to be frightened of. It’s empty,” Gary

called. Then he stepped inside.

Andrew was certain that Gary did nothing more than pull the door
easily, yet it slammed shut with a bang that made his heart leap.

“Hey, Andy, open the door!” Gary’s voice was muffled and strangely
distant. “Come on; It’s dark in here. I feel like I’m gonna suffocate.”

“I never touched it, Gaz! I never touched it!” Andrew rushed in and
tugged at the door handles as hard as he could. They refused to move.
“Please come out, Gaz. I’m scared.”

Slowly, so slowly, faces began to appear in the gleaming carvings of
the wardrobe. They seemed to stare at Andrew, malevolent and hideous,
tattered horrors from the darkest comers of his mind.

Andrew screamed as horrible scrabbling sounds came from inside.
Gary’s cry rose to a high-pitched howl.

Again Andrew tried to open the doors, but they were jammed impos¬
sibly tight. All the while the faces grinned at him, mocking his efforts.

Almost out of his mind with terror, Andrew looked wildly around the
shed for something to open the doors with. His eyes briefly touched on
the wooden mallet, the cold chisels with their red plastic handles, a claw
hammer with one claw broken off. All seemed small and ineffectual.

Then he saw the axe propped up in one comer. He picked it up, heaved
it onto his shoulder, and brought it down on the side of the wardrobe
with all of his strength.

He smashed it again and again. The strength of madness pushed his
young body to its limits. Wood splintered and cracked. From the mouths

of the demon faces, blood poured, puddling on the floor.

“Andrew!”

136 Jovan Panich

His mother’s scream from the doorway behind him brought him back
to reality.

The doors of the wardrobe swung slowly open, and Gary’s body fell
out. It was gashed and covered in blood. His face was all but unrecogniz¬
able.

The faces laughed gleefully.

“God in Heaven!” screamed his mother, “What have you done?” She
rushed to Gary’s side, lifted his head and cradled it in her arms.

Andrew looked down at her, his face a mixture of horror and bewil¬
derment. The axe fell from his nerveless fingers and thudded on the floor.

What was the matter with her? Couldn’t she see the faces? The demon
faces laughing and howling as the bright red blood ran from their
mouths?

Couldn’t she see the faces?

Angst for the Memories

Vincent McHardy

Canadian writer Vincent McHardy was born April 26, 1955 and
currently resides in Agincourt, Ontario. Following a three-year term in
anthropology at York University, McHardy eventually decided to try his
hand at writing. His interest in fantasy and horror arose through his
voracious reading appetite, which led him to devour everything from Doc
Savage to Ray Bradbury. In the last few years, McHardy has written a
great many short stories. Initially these were published in amateur or
semiprofessional magazines —Quarry, Reader’s Choice, Moonscape,
The Horror Show, Etchings & Odysseys, and others. In the past year he
has sold to Twilight Zone Magazine, Mike Shayne Mystery Magazine,
as well as to several anthologies. The following story is from R. L. Leming’s
small press anthology, Damnations; McHardy has a story also in the
forthcoming follow-up More Damnations. His story, “Keepsake,” was
reprinted in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII.

Vincent McHardy is looking for a publisher interested in a collection
of his short fiction, while he works away at his first novel, And Cancer
For All. Ought to be some takers.

“Thought.

“It’s so far away.

“I can’t see. I can’t feel. I can’t live this way.

“Let me go.

“If I could touch something, or have a hand to touch something with,
I could prove I exist. But there is nothing to point to. No sound. No heat.
No pressure. No light. Nothing.

“Am I talking, or am I thinking? I don’t feel lips moving. Where are
those tender vibrations that would tell me I have a skull?

“Let me go.

“Whoever, whatever holds me here, let me go. Or tell me where I am.
I could live knowing what happened. How I got here. Where this, here,
is. I could live with that, and lie down and die.

137

138 Vincent McHardy

“Ha! Lie down. I could be lying down now, or floating, or falling, or
standing quite still. I can’t tell. There are no boundaries in this world. I
rush to the infinite. I contract to the infinitesimal.

“Let me go.

“End it.

♦ • • •

“ ... Here.”

“What!”

“I’m here. Don’t go.”

“I won’t go. I won’t go. Where are you?”

“Nowhere. There was nothing to hold my mind until I found you.”
“Then you’re not the one holding me here?”

“No. I’m here with you.”

“Then, who are you?”

“I’m not sure.”

“You’re part of my madness.”

“I am not. I found you. I pulled you to me.”

“Then tell me your name.”

“It’s been so long since I asked myself that question.”

“Your name. Tell me!”

“I remember, Lloyd . . . Lloyd Pryce. Yes, Lloyd Pryce. A beautiful
name. A glorious title for existing. Don’t you think?”

“Yes.”

“Lloyd. Lloyd. Lloyd. Oh, how I hated my name as a child. A child. I
was a child. I grew up. Became a forest manager. Yes. Yes. I married
Jennifer Cleary. We have four children. I... I want to go back. Oh Lord,
please take me back. Don’t leave ....”

“Shut up! Don’t crawl. They want us to crawl.”

“They?”

“Yes, they. Do you think this is natural? Someone has done this to us.
Put us here. Blocked our senses. Disoriented us.”

“It’s possible.”

“It’s true, Lloyd. You broke their plans. You reached me.”

“I had to. I’d reached bottom. I had to find somebody. Somebody?
Who are you?”

“Well, I’m ...”

“Come on. It shouldn’t be difficult.”

“Just a minute, will you ... ?”

“Does it start with an A?”

“Please, let me think.”

“Stop.”

Angst for the Memories 139

“Why not start with all the alphabet. It doesn’t matter. Does it? Not to
a ..

“ALEXANDER J. SCULLY! Druggist for thirty-five years, at Kirbie’s
Pharmacy. Divorced. No children. Graduated Danner University, with
honors. And, to the best of my recollection, I had a very happy child¬
hood.”

“I’m sorry, Al. I thought you might be ...”

“Might be what I thought you were?”

“Yes.”

“We might be, Lloyd. Names don’t prove we exist.”

“They help. Before we named ourselves, we drifted. Names give us
something to hold on to. Names will pull us out of here.”

“How did you know I was out here? I sensed nothing.”

“I didn’t knowyou were out there. I drifted. How long I can’t tell. Then
something twitched. I felt there must be something out there. The
darkness changed. I felt a thickness and thought, ‘There it is.’ And then
you came.”

“Nothing more than thought?”

“That’s all it took, Al.”

“Then we must remember. Develop links to our past. Our past will
save us.”

“Yes, that’s it, Al. Try and remember your last day in the real world. I
remember mine. I was on vacation, camping, up at Lake-of-the-Woods.
We have a cabin up there. Jenny and the kids were up with me. I wanted
to hike over to Gem Lake. You can only get there by foot. I went alone.
It’s a five-hour walk, too long for the children. I camped overnight. Ten
hours of walking left little time for exploring. Nothing unusual happened.
I reached the lake, explored, caught dinner and pitched a tent under a
fine Norwegian pine. I read by the light of a Coleman till about one. After
I turned out the light, I heard the sound of thunder. I remember thinking,
oh, it’s going to be a fine storm. The way summer storms are. I tried to
stay awake, but the pounding tapped on and on. The storm was far away.
It crept closer. I fell asleep listening. Now, I’m here.”

“Nowhere.”

“I wish I’d stayed awake.”

“Listen, Lloyd. Listen to my last day outside.”

“I’m all ears.”

“I opened the pharmacy at seven-thirty, like always. The clerks were
waiting for me. The papers came at seven-thirty-eight, our first customer
at eight-o-six. The morning was slow. I ate the lunch I brought. The
afternoon could have been the morning. At six-fifteen I went to the

140 Vincent McHardy

Golden Wheel Restaurant next door and had supper. I came back and
waited until ten before closing up. I live just across the street, so I was
home in time to catch the early news. I filled my pipe, my only vice, and
sat to watch. Bombings, revolutions and cold war politics. I’d seen it all
before, like the world had and will again. The news didn’t tell me
anything new, so I drifted off, and beached up here.”

“Al, we’re dead.”

“The hell we are!”

“It fits. You with your pipe, me in a lightning storm, we both could
have fried in the night.”

“Could, could, could. That’s not proof. That’s not even probable. I’ve
been smoking a pipe for over thirty years, and I’ve learned that it’s
damned hard to keep lit. It’s not like a cigarette. You’ve got to puff it,
coddle it, make sure your spittle doesn’t drown it. You concentrate to
keep it going. Lloyd, that pipe was cold by the time I fell asleep.

“Now, what about that lightning? The tree you were sleeping under,
it wasn’t the only tree around?”

“I was in a forest.”

“The tree wasn’t the tallest tree in the forest?”

“No, it wasn’t.”

“So the danger was slight. Chances are, you didn’t bum from light¬
ning.”

“But there is always a chance. When you hear that one in ten thousand
will die in a car crash, you think, well, it won’t be me. Those are just
statistics. People are statistics! Some bodies must die to make those
numbers add up. So why not you and me? Eh, Al? Who’s to say we can’t
crap out on a dice roll? You fall asleep with a pipe that can’t be lit with
a blow torch, but tonight is special, one small ember holds on. No reason.
Just one-in-a-million. Poof! Inside of ten minutes, you’re indistinguish¬
able from your pipe ash. And me. Lucky Lloyd, with a trillion-billion-to-
one, triple-lightning-bolt bank shot, off the water, off the rock, off the
tree to off me. I’m probably sitting out there, grinning, with my zipper
electroplated.”

“Stop it, Lloyd. You didn’t struggle to reach me just to prove you’re
dead.”

“Why not? I don’t know why I thought there was something out there
in the dark. I just thought. The thought might be a joke, to give us hope
there is a way out of here. Al? If we’re not dead, then what are we?”

“We are lost. We are confused. But we exist . We have our minds. If we
have a mind, we have a brain. I’ve been a chemist all my life, and I’ve

Angst for the Memories 141

yet to see an exception to the rule, function following form. Our minds
must have a form to exist.”

“But where are we?”

“I think we are in a tank.”

“Tank?”

“A desensitization tank. No light. No sound. No sensation of up or
down. Just floating.”

“No. It doesn’t make sense. If we were in a tank. I’d be able to splash.
I’d hear that. Or I’d be able to punch myself. I’d feel that.”

“True. If we were in a tank alone. But if we are drugged, or restrained,
those methods are not possible. If this is true, we are living through our
skins. The difference between the inner and outer world is a delicate one.
Remove the barrier, disrupt it, and you unleash monsters.”

“If our senses are blocked, how are we talking?”

“Well, we’re not speaking. They wouldn’t have overlooked our hear¬
ing. I’m willing to believe it’s telepathy. Cut off from our bodies, by the
tank and drugs, our minds are active. You close one door and you’ve
opened another. They’ve awakened us to telepathy.”

“They. You’re always talking about them. You sound paranoid.”

“This place is paranoid. It is constructed to drive us mad. I’m looking
for a reason to save us. There must be a reason why we are here. I can’t
give you a name, but I can give you a reason. Somebody wants us to lose
our memories.”

“Tabula Rasa:’

‘Yes, that’s it.”

“But why?”

“I’ve seen it coming on the vid-news. Last year’s Southern Hemisphere
Alliance, the bombing of OPEC ministers in Geneva, the destruction of
Mexico City by the plague, I could go on. The world is at war, an
undeclared war that’s claimed us as victims.”

“But we’re unimportant. Nobody would want us.”

“Lloyd, in a war, anyone behind enemy lines is important. Someone,
some power, wants our names, our pasts, but not us.”

“It’s possible.”

“It’s true!”

“No truer than my theory.”

“How can you say that? I’ve used reason to show ...”

“To show we disagree. We won’t get out this way.”

“You’re right. We must work together.”

“It’s the only way.”

142 Vincent McHardy

“Al, don’t be spiteful about Nancy.”

“Nancy?”

“Curious. At a time of crisis you think of your ex-wife. You haven’t
forgiven her for the divorce. Do you really believe if she stayed with you,
you wouldn’t be here?”

“How’d you know?”

“Reason, Al. You said it. You used it as a club against me. I reasoned
that, if we’re linked telepathically, I didn’t have to wait until you sent me
a thought. I could take what was there.”

“Get out of my mind!”

“Don’t be afraid Al. It works both ways. If we’re ever to get out of here,
it must work both ways. We can only grow stronger. Try ....”

“Chalk. You’re smelling chalk from the blackboard eraser. You’re
cleaning them after school.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that.”

“Somewhere you were. Under the layers. I found it. You’re right. It
works.”

“We are right.”

• • • •

“Lloyd, I feel something.”

“I know. You feel the others. Ever since I found you I’ve felt them. Now
that we’re linked you feel them.”

“Have you spoken to them?”

“No. I sense them. It’s like trying to remember something you’ve
known all your life. You strain to remember. You feel a resistance. You
back away. Calm down, and there it is. You remember.”

“I don’t know if I can calm down, Lloyd. I’ve been on the edge too
long.”

“You can do it, Al. We work together now. We can break through if
we cooperate.”

“I’ll try.”

“Think back to when you were happy. When nothing was wrong and
you thought you would live forever.”

“I’ve never had a time like that.”

“Yes you did. Time held its breath and you breathed deeply.”

“Never!”

“You’re twelve years old and it’s summer vacation. You’re in a
canoe ....”

“ ... It’s three in the morning and I have the lake to myself.”

“That’s it.”

“The air is still. The water is dark, deadly still. I’m the only human

Angst for the Memories 143

moving at three in the morning. There are no stars. The sky is overcast.
I can see the forest edging the lake because the sky lights up with distant
lightning. A storm is coming. I turn on my flashlight and hold it between
my knees. A mist sits on the water. I paddle out deeper. Tiny whirlpools
suckle down to the mud below. Water dribbles off the blade as I reach
for another pull. I bang the canoe with the handle as I stroke through.
The sky grumbles ....”

“What! Why did you wake me? Is it news from the front?”

((r JJ

L. • • •

“Speak up man! I have little time for sleep and no time for needless
interruptions. What are the Russians doing?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“I’ll have your head on a spike! Guards! Remove that man!”

“What?”

“He’s quite mad, Al.”

“What’s going on, Lloyd?”

“We broke through. Your sense memory pulled us through the barrier
to him. He thinks he’s Napoleon, but he’s Arthur Friske. A used car
salesman, playing out his dreams of power.”

“I’ve always wanted to know what lurked beneath a used car
salesman’s smile. It’s not pleasant.”

“Not at all, Al. That’s why I’m controlling him.”

“Yes. I can’t hear him.”

“We don’t need to hear him. It would take more energy than we can
afford to unravel his madness. We could get lost down there.”

“Yes, Lloyd. We can’t waste time explaining. We must get out.”

“We can, and will get out. Do you feel how?”

“I feel something.”

“Power, Al. It’s power. Since we took over that pathetic Arthur Friske,
we’ve grown. We resonate.”

“Lloyd? Something is moving. I feel it around us. Swimming, lurking,
waiting for us.”

“The others. There are many others out there, Al. Hundreds. We must
agree that we can’t stop to listen. Not if we want to get out.”

“Agreed. The others will all have stories and needs. They might contest us.”

“If we give them a chance.”

“We won’t. We need their life power.”

“Power to reach the edge. Power to escape.”

“The others can come, but they must follow.”

“Al—Lloyd will not stop.”

144 Vincent Mctlardy

“Thank you. I knew someone would come. I knew I wouldn’t be left
here alone. I...”

“Must we cut her?”

“We must. Feel the power?”

“Feel the awakening?”

“More come. Listen to them. They splat on us like bugs on a wind¬
screen. Lucy Spicer. Aloysia Rutter. Lawrence Ellam. Gertrude Diack.
William Rumelfanger. Come in.”

“So fast. We can’t count you all. So fast. We want to scream.”

• • • •

“The barrier.”

“The barrier!”

“It is complete. It is sealed.”

“It is hard. It is cold. It cannot be tom.”

“This is not the end. The hundreds cry.”

“It is time to wait.”

• • • •

“Light!”

“A band of light!”

“The barrier is breaking open.”

“Move now. Move out to the light!”

The truck/vat had sat in the back room of the abortion clinic, forgot¬
ten. The five-hundred-plus fetuses originally left inside, equally forgot¬
ten.

But times and contents change.

As seen when someone curiously opened the lid ... and something,
very much like a hand, reached out

• • • •

The Thing in the Bedroom

David Langford

David. Langford has long held the name-most-often-on-a-hit-list dis¬
tinction in science fiction circles as the fearless editor of the magazine,
Ansible. Born in 1953 in South Wales, Langford earned an honors degree
in physics at Brasenose College, Oxford and worked as a physicist at
Atomic Weapons Research Establishment, Aldermaston until 1980. Since
then he has been a freelance author, whose books on various subjects
include War in 2080: The Future of Military Technology, Facts &
Fallacies: A Book of Definitive Mistakes & Misguided Predictions (with
Chris Morgan), The Necronomicon (with George Hay, Robert Turner,
and Colin Wibon), The Space Eater (a novel), The Leaky Establishment
(a satire), and the forthcoming The Third Millennium: A History of the
World 2000-3000 AD (with Brian Stableford).

Robert Bloch has commented that horror and humor are flip sides of
the same coin. While Langford’s last appearance in The Year’s Best
Horror Stories (“3.47 AM” in Series XII) was unrelentingly grim, with
“The Thing in the Bedroom” he takes an irreverent poke at one of thb
genre’s hallowed traditions, the occult investigator. David Langford
currently lives with hb wife, Hazel, “in a vast crumbling house in Reading,
with 7000 books and slightly fewer woodworm. ”

The circle of initiates about the roaring fire in the King’s Head bar was
sadly diminished of late, entertaining though the conversation had
always been. For one thing, the roaring fire had been superseded by a
mournfully bonging radiator; even the popular Mr. Jorkens had ceased
to come when the landlord installed his third Space Invaders machine.
On this particular evening there was little sparkle in the conversation,
and far too much in the foaming keg beer; only Major Godaiming,
Carruthers and old Hyphen-Jones were present, and, passing by an easy
transition from gassy beer to chemical warfare and military reminis¬
cences in general, the Major was well into his much-thumbed anecdotes
of the earlobe he lost to Rommel, the dueling scar acquired while in

145

146 David Langford

Heidelberg on a package tour, and the ugly kukri wound he’d received
in Bradford. Carruthers and Hyphen-Jones yawned their appreciation
and choked down their beer; half-formed excuses about not keeping the
wife up too late seemed to be trembling in the air like ectoplasm, when
a shadow fell across the table.

“My round, chaps!”

The speaker was tall, handsome, rugged; from his built-up shoes to
his shoulder bag he was every inch an English gentleman.

“Smythe, my dear fellow!” the Major cried. “We’d given you up for
dead!”

“And well you might,” said Smythe. “It happened to me once, did
death—you may remember my telling you about that hideous affair of
the haunted percolator? For a short while, then, I was clinically dead. It
was nothing. There are things worse than death, worse by far....”

“Murrage’s keg beer, for example?” suggested Carruthers.

The subtlety of this hint was not lost on Smythe, who took the empty
glasses to the bar and in a mere twenty minutes returned with three beers
and a stiff gin-and-tonic for himself.

“Cheers,” said the Major. “Now where have you been these last three
months? Living abroad with some woman, I suppose, as you did for half
a year after laying the ghost in that ‘Astral Buffalo’ case? Ah, you randy
devil—”

“Not so,” Smythe said with a laugh. “For one reason and another I’ve
merely been visiting a different class of pub, a different sort of bar, as
shortly you will understand ...”

“Well, dammit man, what was this case?” the Major boomed. “What
was so much more terrible than death? You’ve changed, you know. The
experience has set its mark upon you ... by God! Your hair! I’ve only
just noticed it’s gone white!”

“Just a little bleach, my dear Major—I fancied myself as a blond. But
let me tell you of the case which must rank as one of the most baffling
and sinister of my career—an appalling case of what I can only call occult
possession .”

“We had that last year,” said Carruthers, scratching his head. “That
business of the giant bat of Sumatra: or was it the giant cat? One frightful
influence from beyond the world we know is very like another, I find.”

Smythe settled himself more comfortably on his favorite stool, smiled,
and opened a packet of potato chips in the characteristic manner which
told his friends that another fascinating narration was on its way, and
that they were to buy drinks for the raconteur all the rest of that evening.

“As you know, I’ve gained some small reputation in the matters of

The Thing in the Bedroom 147

detection, the occult and the odd tricks of the mind—” Here Smythe
distributed the customary business cards and mentioned the 10 percent
discount he offered to friends—’’And so it was that Mrs. Pring brought
her terrible problem to me, and on the recommendation of a bosom
friend who’d heard of my ad in the Sunday Times color supplement. Mrs.
Pring—”

“Ah, an incurable old womanizer,” wheezed Hyphen-Jones. “Did Mr.
Pring find you out?”

Smythe gave him an austere glance, and coldly ate another chip. “Mrs.
Pring is a widow of forty-six, whose home is in the moderately appalling
seaside resort of Dash. She lets out one room of her house under the
usual bed-and-breakfast terms. Personally I think the enterprise would
be more successful if she did not apparently stuff the mattress with
breakfast cereal and serve its former contents in a bowl each morning,
but this is to anticipate. The story Mrs. Pring told to me three months
ago was, like so many of the tales told in my office, strange, terrible and
unique. Over the years, you see, my client had noticed a curious statistical
trend as regards the people who stayed with her. She keeps a very
detailed set of books, two in fact, and there was no possibility that her
memory could be deceiving her. In brief: many gentlemen (to use her
term) had undergone bed and breakfast at Mrs. Pring’s and for some
reason which I find inexplicable had returned in subsequent years. Some
women did the same: the odd point which caught Mrs. Pring’s attention
was that young or even relatively young women tended not to return. In
fact they tended to leave abruptly, with various noises of embarrassment
and outrage, after no more than one night in the room. That Mrs. Pring
took several years to notice the phenomenon is perhaps best explained
by her delicate state of health, which is only sustained by almost daily
trips to buy medicinal liquids not sold by chemists. That Mrs. Pring was
properly alarmed by her discovery is shown by the fact that for a whole
year she actually provided butter rather than margarine with the break¬
fast toast: it made no difference. What d’you make of that?”

“I suppose,” said Carruthers slowly, “that some terrible tragedy had
been enacted in that fatal room?”

Smythe looked startled, and dropped a chip. “Well—yes, actually.
However did you guess?”

“My dear fellow. I’ve been listening to your curious and unique tales
for upwards of eight years.”

“Well, never mind that. Mrs. Pring evolved a theory that that all too
unyielding mattress was infested, not with elementals as in that fearsome
Wriggling Eiderdown case but with what in her rustic way she chose to

148 David Langford

call incests. As she put it, ‘What I thought was, those bleeding things
might be partial to young ladies what has nice soft skin .. . anyway, I
reckoned I’d better have a kip-down there meself and see if anything
comes crawling-like, bedbuggers or flippin’ fleas or whatever—’ With
uncommon fortitude, Mrs. Pring did indeed pass a night in this spare
room of hers. Her account of it is very confused indeed, but she remarked
several times that something had indeed come a-crawling ... but as to
its nature and actions, she continually lapsed into a state of incoherence
and embarrassment. The same embarrassment, you may note, with
which her lady lodgers would so hurriedly leave.”

The Major said: “And the next morning, I suppose, she came straight
to you and asked for something to be done about it?”

Smythe studied each of his friends in turn, until Hyphen-Jones misin¬
terpreted the dramatic pause and scurried to buy more drinks. “In point
of fact,” Smythe said quietly, “she first attempted to investigate the
phenomenon more closely by sleeping in that room every night for the
following six months. It seems that no other manifestation took place
during all that time, as she informed me with some suppressed emotion;
after a while she dismissed the experience as hallucination and thought
little more of it until the first week of the new holiday season—when no
less than three young women stayed a night and left without eating the
margarine they’d paid for. One of them murmured something incoherent
to Mrs. Pring about a ghost that needed to be laid. It was then that Mrs.
Pring decided something must be done: and after checking that my fee
was tax-deductible, she placed the matter in my hands.”

“Why d’you suppose the Pring female only saw whatever-it-was the
one time?” inquired Carruthers.

“My theory has to take into account the fact that this was a chauvinist
haunting, as you might put it, with a preference for young ladies, quite
contrary to the Sex Discrimination Act. The inference would seem to be
that Mrs. Pring, who is a lady of what is called a certain age, very rapidly
lost her attraction for—let’s call it the manifestation. Picture her as a
glass of that repellent keg beer: one sip was quite enough for any person
of taste.”

“I’m beginning to get a vague but quite monstrous notion of what
you’re leading up to ... ’’the Major observed slowly.

“It’s worse than you think,” Smythe assured him. “I know I shall never
be the same again after the night I spent in that room.”

“But—” said Hyphen-Jones querulously, before Smythe silenced him
with a single charismatic gesture which tipped half a pint of beer into
his lap.

The Thing in the Bedroom 149

“An exorcism seemed to be in order,” said Smythe, “but first I had to
know what I was up against. You recall that ghastly business of the
Squeaking Room in Frewin Hall—the exorcism had no effect whatever
upon those mice. When closely questioned, Mrs. Pring retreated into
blushes and giggles: I saw I’d have to keep a vigil there myself, and see
what astral impressions my finely trained nervous system might not
glean from the surroundings. Thus I traveled first-class to Dash, and Mrs.
Pring accompanied me back in (I’m glad to relate) a second-class
carriage. The resort was as depressing as I’d foreseen, rather like an
extensive penal colony by the sea; Mrs. Pring’s house corresponded
roughly to the maximum security block. Anyway, I steeled myself against
the appalling Presence which pervaded the place—chiefly a smell of
boiled cabbage—and readied myself to pass a night within the haunted
room. I assured Mrs. Pring that I never failed ... have you ever known
me tell the story of a case in which I failed?”

Hyphen-Jones looked up again. “What about that time when—ouch!”
Some paranormal impulse had helped the rest of his beer to find its way
into his lap.

“So I assured her, as I said, that I never failed—ah, little did I
know—and that whatever dwelt in that room was as good as exorcized.
I fancied, you know, that she looked regretful—as though admitting to
herself that a favorite aunt who’d committed several chainsaw massacres
should probably be locked up, but admitting it regretfully. So, one by
one, I ascended the creaking stairs to that room of dread. The dying sun
peered through its single window in a flood of grimy yet eldritch
radiance. But there was nothing sinister about the place save the peeling
wallpaper, whose green-and-purple pattern set me brooding for some
reason on detached retinas. I waited there, as darkness fell, all lights
extinguished to minimize the etheric interference ...”

“And what happened, old boy?” cried Carruthers. “What happened to
you?”

“Precisely what I’d expected: nothing at all. Whatever haunted that
room was staying a male chauvinist pig to the very last. The only moment
when a thrill went through me was when I heard a clock strike midnight
far out across the town—the witching hour—the moment when my
consultation rates switched from time-and-a-half to double time. Pres¬
ently dawn came, and this being the seaside resort of Dash it wasn’t even
a proper rosy dawn: more like suet pudding rising in the east. An
appalling place.

“Over breakfast, when not pitting my teeth against Mrs. Pring’s famous
vintage toast, I questioned her closely about the room’s history. As you

150 David Langford

know, we occult sleuths can deduce a great deal from the answers to
innocuous-seeming questions; after some routine inquiries about
whether, for example, she regularly celebrated the Black Mass in the
room in question, I subtly asked her, ‘Mrs. Pring, has some terrible
tragedy been enacted in that fatal room?’ She denied this loudly and
angrily, saying, ‘What kind of a house do you think I bleeding well keep
here? I’ve had no complaints and no-one’s ever snuffed it on my premises,
not even Mr. Brosnan what had the food-poisoning, which he must have
got from chips or summat brought in against me house rules ... you’ll
not get no food-poisoning from my bacon-an-eggs, sir.’

“I was tolerably well convinced that I wouldn’t, since after noting how
many times Mrs. Pring dropped the bacon on the floor I had taken the
precaution of secreting mine under the table-cloth (where I was inter¬
ested to find several other rashers left by previous visitors). After a short
silence during which she tested the temperature of the teapot with one
finger and apparently found it satisfactory, Mrs. Pring added: ‘Of course
there was always poor Mr. Nicolls all those years ago.’

“We occult sleuths are trained to seize instantly on apparent trivia.
Casually I threw out the remark, ‘What about poor Mr. Nicolls?’

“‘Oh, ’e had a terrible accident, he did. Oh, it was awful, sir. What a
lucky thing he wasn’t married. What happened, you see, he caught
himself in the door somehow, which I could understand, him being
clumsy by nature and having such a— Well, lucky he wasn’t married is
what I always said, and of course ’e wouldn’t get married after that. I
heard tell he went into the civil service instead. —Oooh sir, you don’t
think—?’

“‘I do indeed think precisely that, Mrs. Pring,’ I told her solemnly. We
occult sleuths are, as you can imagine, sufficiently accustomed to such
phenomena as disembodied hands or heads haunting some ill-favored
spot, and I’ve even encountered one disembodied foot—you remember
it, the ‘Howling Bunion’ case, which drove three Archbishops to the
asylum. I conjectured now that the unfortunate Mr. Nicolls, though it
seemed that most of him still lived, was a man of parts and haunted Mrs.
Pring’s room still. Upon hearing my theory, the landlady seemed less
shocked and horrified than I would have expected. ‘Fancy that,’ she
remarked with a look of peculiar vacancy, and added, ‘I ought to ’ave
recognized him, at that.’ I did not press my questioning any further.”

“What a frightful story,” shivered Carruthers. “To think of that poor
Mr. Nicolls, never able to know the pleasure of women again.”

“In that,” said Smythe in a strange voice, “I share his fate.”

There was a tremulous pause. Smythe licked his lips, squared his

The Thing in the Bedroom 151

shoulders. “I must have a trickle,” he remarked, and departed the room
amid whispered comments and speculations as to whether or not there
was something odd in the way he walked.

“My strategy,” Smythe continued presently, “was to lure the manifes¬
tation into the open so it might be exorcized by the Ritual of the Astral
League. You need damnably supple limbs for that ritual, but it has great
power over elementals, manifestations and parking meters. But how to
lure this ab-human entity into sight? Mrs. Pring no longer had charms
for it, which was understandable, and I could hardly ask for some
innocent young woman to expose herself to what I now suspected to lurk
in that room.

“In the end I saw there was only one thing to be done. During the day
I made certain far from usual purchases in the wholly God-forsaken town
of Dash, and also paid a visit to a local hairdresser’s. You remarked, did
you not, my dear Major, that I’d gone ash-blond with fright? I cleared
the furniture from that bedroom and made my preparations—having first
instructed Mrs. Pring to remain downstairs and presented her with a
bottle of her favorite medicine to ensure she did so. Now the water in
that town, I suspected, was not pure: instead I consecrated a quantity of
light ale and with it marked out my usual protective pentacle. This was
a mark-IX Camacki pentacle, guaranteed impervious to any materialized
ectoplasmic phenomenon as specified in British Standard 3704.

“In the early evening I carried out the last stages of my plan, undressing
and changing into the clothes I’d bought amid some small embarrass¬
ment. There was a rather exquisite form-fitting black dress with its skirt
slashed almost to the hip; beneath this dress, by certain stratagems well
known to us occult consultants, I contrived a magnificent bosom for
myself. I need scarcely trouble you with the minor details of the sensual
perfume guaranteed to send any male bar the unfortunate Mr. Nicolls
into instant tachycardia, or the pastel lipstick which so beautifully
complemented my eyes, or the sheer black stockings which I drew over
my carefully shaven legs, or... ”

“All right, all right,” said the Major, gulping hastily at his beer. “I think
we get the general idea.”

“Be like that if you must. I waited there in the huge pentacle, in a room
lit only by the flickering candles I’d acquired from the occult-supplies
counter at the local Woolworth’s. As I stood there I could see myself in
the mirror screwed to one wall (presumably because Mrs. Pring felt her
guests might well smuggle out any six-by-four-foot mirror that wasn’t
screwed down): I was magnificent, I tell you, a vision of—oh, very well,
if you insist.

152 David Langford

“I waited there with the tension mounting, waiting for whatever might
(so to speak) come, and the candles gradually burnt down. The room
filled with bodings of approaching abomination, as of a dentist’s waiting
room. Suddenly I realized there was a strange luminescence about me,
a very pale fog of light that filled the air, as though Mrs. Pring were
boiling vast quantities of luminous paint in the kitchen below. With
fearful slowness the light coagulated, condensed, contracted toward a
point in the air some eighteen inches from the floor; abruptly it took
definite shape and I saw the throbbing, ectoplasmic form of the thing
that had haunted this room for so long. It was larger than I’d expected,
perhaps nine inches from end to end; it wavered this way and that in the
air as though seeking something in a curious one-eyed manner; the
thought occurred to me that it had formed atop the bed and centrally
positioned itself, or at least would have done so had I not previously
removed the bed. Even as this notion flared in my mind like a flashbulb,
the Thing appeared to realize there was nothing to support it now: it
flopped quite solidly and audibly to the floor.”

“Audibly?” Hyphen-Jones quavered. “With a thud, or a clatter, or—?”

Smythe darted an impatient glance at him. “With the sound of a large
frankfurter falling from a height of eighteen inches onto wooden floor¬
boards, if you wish to be precise. The horror of it! These solid manifes¬
tations are the most terrible and inarguable of spiritual perils—it’s
infinitely easier to deal with an astral entity which can’t respond with a
sudden blow to your solar plexus. And worst of all, something which
might have sent my hair white if I hadn’t already dyed it this rather
fetching color, the Thing had now fallen inside the pentacle, with me!
Again, imagine the horror of it, the feeling of spiritual violation: already
my outer defenses had been penetrated. The ab-human embodiment
reared up, questing this way and that like a cobra readying its strike—and
then it began to move my way. I utterly refuse to describe the manner in
which it moved, but I believe there are caterpillars which do the same
thing. If so, they have no shame. I knew that a frightful peril was coming
for me—it’s always horribly dangerous when something materializes
inside your very defenses, though this wasn’t perhaps as bad as in that
Phantom Trumpeter case: you remember it, where the spectral elephant
took solid form within my all too small pentacle? But in this particular
situation I felt I was safe from the worse, at least.”

“Why were you safe from the worst?” asked the fuddled Hyphen-
Jones.

“A matter of anatomy,” Smythe said evasively, and left Hyphen-Jones
to work it out. “Still, I was too confident, as it happened. The only safe

The Thing in the Bedroom 153

course was to get out of that room and perhaps try to bag it with a

long-range exorcism from the landing_What I did was to experiment

with a little of the consecrated ale left over from making the pentacle. I
flicked some at the crawling Thing as it snaked its way toward me,
and—well, it must have been peculiarly sensitive. It positively dribbled
with rage, and vanished in a burst of ectoplasm.

“I believed the Thing must have withdrawn itself for the night,
abandoning its rigid form and returning to the nameless Outer Spheres.
Again, I’d fallen into the trap of over-confidence ... I was still standing
there in my fatally gorgeous ensemble when once again that luminous
fog filled the air about me and—no, I can’t bring myself to describe what
happened then. Certain of the older grimoires recommend that practi¬
tioners of the magical arts, black or white, should ritually seal each of
the nine orifices of the body as part of the preliminaries. I believe I now
know why.”

“My God, you don’t mean—?” said Carruthers, but seemed to lack the
vocabulary or inclination to take the sentence further. Hyphen-Jones
appeared to be counting under his breath.

“Well, I’ll be buggered,” the Major murmured.

Tersely Smythe explained how, pausing only to waive his fee and
advise that Mrs. Pring should sleep henceforth in the cursed room while
renting out her own, he’d departed Dash without so much as changing
his clothing.

“So my life was transformed by that Thing in the Bedroom,” he
concluded gaily. “Now let me tell you of my newest case, one which I
was previously reluctant to investigate—the matter of the haunted
chamber in the Cafe Royal, where the shade of Oscar Wilde is said to (at
the very least) walk...”

Borderland

by John Brizzolara

John Brizzolara was born in Chicago on December 11,1950. He grew
up in that city, where he read avidly the works of authors ranging from
Poe and Lovecraft to Conan Doyle and H. G. Wells to Franklin W. Dixon
and Mickey Spillane. During the late sixties and early seventies he traveled
and recorded with various rock bands—“now defunct and probably best
forgotten.”He and his wife, Diane, currently reside in San Diego, Cali¬
fornia, with their son, Geoffrey Byron. The couple have collaborated on
several stories, and Brizzolara has had fiction published in Weird Tales,
Whispers, Weirdbook, Isaac Asimov’s, Twilight Zone Magazine, and
Amazing. He has left the music business and now pays the bilb by tending
bar and working in bookstores.

Brizzolara explains that “‘Borderland’ was the product of a night I
spent last December driving up and down the San Diego/Tijuana border
with a U.S. Border Patrol agent in a four-wheel-drive Ram Charger. I was
doing research on a hard-boiled detective novel I’ve written called
Wirecutter and it occurred to me that the setting was a fine one for the
annual Chrbtmas ghost story Diane and I write for each other to be read
on Chrbtmas Eve. (In the M. R. James tradition.)”Brizzolara’s novel has
been at one publbherfor some months now, and if it’s half as effective as
“Borderland, ” they’d best be drawing up a contract.

“Kind of spooky,” Sanchez said, just to be saying something. He realized
immediately that it sounded wrong; it was a “new guy” kind of thing to
say.

The moon was a tiny arc of cold light that illuminated nothing. The
early November wind was a muffled shriek outside as it wound through
the canyons and over the mesa. It sang with a reedy, plaintive voice as
it passed the stand of eucalyptus trees known as the Dillon Treeline.
Tumbleweeds flew through the air and launched themselves against the
darkened Border Patrol Ram Charger, striking the windshield and the
side panels of the van with the sound of fingernails seeking entry.

155

156 by John Brizzolara

It was 11:53 p.m. on a Saturday night.

“You’ll get used to it.” Hagen kept turning left and then right in the
passenger seat, peering into the blackness at hurtling shadows. “God¬
damn tumbleweeds. I keep thinking we got something out there, and it’s
just tumbleweeds every time.” Hagen was a heavyset man in his early
forties with sideburns that were a little too long for his crew cut hair. He
looked like a man who has spent most of his life in some kind of authority
over others, but Sanchez had noticed an extraordinary gentleness about
him.

“It’s corny. Dead Man’s Canyon.” Sanchez put on his gloves and raised
the collar on his jacket, watching his breath condense against the
starlight. He couldn’t so much as light a cigarette without giving away
their position. If there was anyone out there to give it away to, that is.
“They really call it that, huh?”

“Yep. The Mexicans call it pretty much the same thing. I guess we got
the name from them. I don’t really know.”

“Sounds like kid stuff. The Hardy Boys and the Secret of Dead Man’s
Canyon. Something like that.”

“Yeah.” Hagen pointed with his chin at the umbra of shadow, like a
huge wound, in the mesa ahead of them. “You can’t see the bottom of
that thing from anywhere around. Not unless you get right up to it.
There’s a good mile and a half of it, too, between the border and Spring
Canyon.” He spat tobacco out the window. “You got bandit activity, rape,
a body? I’d say a good seven, eight times outta ten it’s in Dead Man’s.”

Sanchez was still unused to the casualness with which the other agents
dealt with the atmosphere of violence and desperation in their job. It was
his second week on the patrol along the San Diego/Tijuana border and
already he had had rocks thrown at him, been kicked in the crotch, and
retrieved the body of a drowned boy from the Tijuana River levy. Now
for the first time he was patrolling the Browns Field sector along the Otay
Mesa to the east; what the illegals called El Cerro and the agents called
the Eastern Front. It was here that the bandits who preyed on the groups
of fence-cutters, or alambristas, found business to be the most profitable.
Mostly inaccessible, even with four-wheel-drive vehicles, the canyons
provided a perfect ambush gallery for their victims and an impossible
obstacle course for La Migra, the Border Patrol.

In the past three weeks there had been a rise in incidents along the
Eastern Front. One narcotic overdose: the body had been tossed over a
fence to the U.S. side from a hotel window. Another boy, shot to death,
had been discovered near the microwave dish in the E3 sector—no one
knew why, nor would they ever know. And there had been three rapes,

Borderland 157

one of which was stopped in progress by Border agents; the other two
were now statistics in an open file in the prosecution office. As always,
people were victimized in one way or another, often by the “coyotes” or
the guides themselves, then left to wander the mesa to be arrested by
the Patrol. These would be returned to Mexico the next day, destitute
and without prospects, but alive. They were the lucky ones. Many found
their way into unmarked graves. There was no way of ever really
knowing how many.

Hagen, still pivoting his head from side to side and shifting his position
to see into the near-total blackness outside the van, picked up the radio
microphone from the dashboard. “Ten-twenty-eight here. This is 1028
in sector E4 west of the Dillon Treeline. Anybody got a scope shootin’
this way? It’s blacker’n a banker’s heart out here and we can’t tell the bad
guys from the tumbleweed without a program. Over.”

“Ten-twenty-eight, this is 901. That you, Hagen? Over.”

“Yeah, me and Sanchez. You got a scope, Gary? Over.”

“I got the green eye on ya. You boys are all alone. You and the rabbits.
Can’t see down into Dead Man’s, but Moody’s Canyon is clear and Behan
and Velsor are pickin’ up some good ones in Spring. Over.”

The green eyes were the infrared nightscopes that showed up body
heat as a pale patch on a green background. It gave the understaffed
Border Patrol a vital edge during the rush hours between dusk and dawn.

“Okay, Gary, we’re gonna stay in position for a while. Over.”

“Roger. How’s Sanchez doin’? Over.”

Sanchez leaned into the mike and said, “I’m freezing my huevos off. I
can’t believe this is California. Uh, over.”

The laughter came over the speaker, lifeless and metallic. “You’ll get
your circulation goin’ before too long. At least you’re not gettin’ rocked.
Over.”

“I’m goin’ down to take a look, Gary. Swing that eye around every once
in a while, will ya? Over.” Hagen poised the mike back over its cradle.

“Got ya covered, 1028. I’m goin’ off in a few minutes, but Dave’s cornin’
on. He’ll keep ya company, okay? Over. Out.”

Hagen opened his door and climbed down out of the van. “You wanna
take a look around with me?” he invited.

“Sure.” Sanchez lifted his flashlight and his nightstick from the seat.
Outside, he felt he was on the surface of some featureless, distant planet.

“Only bring one of those. Keep one hand free,” Hagen corrected him.

“Oh, yeah.” He followed the other agent to the edge of Dead Man’s
Canyon and looked down. It was as if a piece of the Earth had fallen away

158 by John Brizzolara

and they were looking into a starless void. At first there was no sound
except for the wind and the engine of a small plane in the distance, and
then they both heard a dry rustling below them; it might have been
someone whispering. “You hear that?” he asked Hagen quietly.

By way of answer, the older agent aimed his flashlight into the canyon
and played it briefly over the cholla cactus, the gnarled, hollowed-out
bushes known as “hotels” that served as way stations for illegal immi¬
grants on their trek north. The beam found the floor of the canyon and
the slight trail that had been worn over the years by illicit traffic. He
switched it off quickly. “I don’t see anything.”

“What about that voice? Didn’t you hear that?”

“Yeah. Yeah, I did. I’ll tell you what, partner. I’m goin’ down there.
You run up about fifty yards and move down, kind of head ’em off at the
pass.”

Sanchez nodded and set off at a trot. A rabbit darted across his path
and startled him.

It was a long way from New York, he thought. He had been happy to
get the job and the academy was easy enough. The San Diego border
sounded pretty exciting, riding the ranges, mending fences, pursuits and
arrests. Now that he was here, though, the fantasy had eroded—leaving
only the minutiae of routine in an unreal situation. The shabby, hopeless
people he apprehended every shift by the dozen saddened him and made
him wonder just what kind of a job he was doing after all. The dream of
Western Individualism was a fine one and promised—from a distance—
to suit him, but in the end he couldn’t relate to the cowboy role, not the
way Hagen could with his chewing tobacco and his “head ’em off at the
pass, pard” manner. First as a Puerto Rican kid growing up in an Irish
neighborhood in the Bronx, then as a city adjuster surrounded by friends
who were actors, dancers, or writers, and now trying to pass as a
good-old-boy member of the posse in the American Southwest, Sanchez
increasingly came to define himself by where he did not belong. His gun
slapped against his hip as he ran.

After about fifty yards, he started down slowly. The footing was bad
and the cholla punctured his pant legs. Pieces of the cactus broke off and
worked their way into his boots. He stopped at intervals to remove them,
listening for the sounds they had heard earlier. To his left he could see
Hagen swinging his flashlight. On the wind, Hagen’s voice carried down
the canyon. In Spanish he shouted, “La Migra! Salgan!”

Suddenly the wind increased and two shadows hurtled past Sanchez
running up the embankment. They both wore dark clothing. One, he
could see, was a woman, probably an Indian—judging by her serape and

Borderland 159

S *

braided hair. He turned and shouted, “Hagen! Over here!” and started
to labor back up the hill after them. Someone rushed past him from
behind; he turned abruptly and landed face down in the cholla. Stifling
a cry of pain, he caught a glimpse of white tennis shoes running past
him. In his Puerto Rican accent, he called after them, “Alto. No les
haremos danol ”

He got to his feet and made it to the top. To the west, silhouetted
against the lights of Tijuana and San Ysidro, he could see the figure
wearing the tennis shoes dash across the mesa for the relative safety of
the next canyon. Sanchez was in good physical shape for a smoker and
he closed the distance between them in seconds just as his prey dropped
over the ledge of the next depression. Blood, where the cactus had cut
him, fell into Sanchez’s eye and he blinked. In another moment he could
see, but he had lost the polio. He cursed and turned back toward the Ram
Charger.

He froze when he heard Hagen’s scream.

Dropping his nightstick and drawing the .357 from his holster, San¬
chez ran toward the sound, shouting, “Hagen! Hagen!” At the edge of
the canyon he launched himself downward, taking huge strides, barely
keeping his balance, unmindful of the cactus. “Hagen, answer me!” It
seemed to take forever to get down. At the bottom he found the trail and
ran south until he could hear heavy, ragged breathing and a kind of
sobbing. “Hagen, goddamnit!”

“Over here.” The voice was barely in control. “I’m all right.”

“Shine your light so I can find you.”

“I can’t... I lost it.”

“What happened?” Sanchez fell into tumbleweeds that had accumu¬
lated against the man-made rock break in the trail. He struggled in the
weeds for a moment and pulled his Bic lighter and ignited it. The first
thing he saw was a crude crucifix set into the top of the pile of rocks he
had stumbled against. A grave.

He looked around him and saw Hagen, his eyes ringed with fear,
struggling to free himself from another interlocked mass of tumble¬
weeds. The flashlight lay to his right. Sanchez picked it up and shone it
on his companion. “What the hell happened, man?”

As he helped Hagen from the bed of dried bracken and rock he could
see the other man’s eyes darting to either side of him. He was trembling
as if suddenly aware of the cold. “Let’s just get out of here, okay?”

They made their way back up the embankment. At the top, they could
hear the radio from the van calling into the night. “Ten-twenty-eight,

160 by John Brizzolara

come in. What’s going on, 1028? You read, Hagen? You request assis¬
tance?”

Inside the Ram Charger, Sanchez answered the call. “This is 1028. We
had something good. They got away. We got fouled up a little. Just some
cuts and scrapes, I think. Anybody have a scope on us?”

‘This is 901. Dave here. I’ve had the eye on you for the past ten minutes
or so. I saw one of you guys come up out of Dead Man’s runnin’ across
the mesa chasing something, but I don’t know what the hell it was. I
wasn’t getting any hot spots. What were you chasin’, anyway? You’re the
only ones out there.”

‘You didn’t see them? There were three of them. One of ’em was a
woman.”

“Sorry, buddy. Had my eye peeled and all I got was you.”

“Okay. We missed ’em. Forget it. You might want to advise E3 and E2,
they might come out somewhere in Spring’s or Moody’s. Over.”

“Roger, you okay?”

‘Yeah. Okay. Over.”

Sanchez turned to Hagen. He switched on the instrument lights and
in the green glow he could see that Hagen had scratches running down
one side of his face as if an animal had clawed him. Other than that he
seemed unhurt. The older man held his face in his hands and said softly,
“My dear God, I am losing my ever-loving mind.”

“What happened, man? I heard you scream.”

Hagen looked at him. Even in the ghostly light he could see the man
was pale. “I can’t tell you, Sanchez. I... don’t really know.”

‘Tell me. If there’s somebody out there, I wanna know, man. Okay?”

Hagen looked at him and drew in a breath. He seemed to size up his
partner or maybe how what he was going to say would sound. After a
minute he said, “When I got to the bottom, I saw maybe fifty, a hundred
people. Polios, wirecutters, illegals, men, women, kids. I couldn’t believe
it. I’d never seen so many in one place, not since we caught that whole
shitload cornin’ out of the Flamenco years ago. I didn’t know what to do.
There were too many of them. I turned to go back up and radio in when
I slipped. I fell right on top of a group of them and then I saw . . . “He
stopped speaking though his jaw continued to work ineffectually. He
shook his head and searched the stars for the words.

“What, man? What are you saying?”

His smile was an attempt at reassurance, but seemed instead to be
inappropriate and frightening in the dashboard lights. “I don’t know. I
don’t know what I’m saying. Forget it.”

“Okay, Hagen. Take it easy.”

Borderland 161

Something threw itself against the side of the van with a raking sound
like ground glass on slate. The wind picked up its keening. Hagen drew
his pistol and then the stars were blotted from the windshield by a shape
that pressed itself to the van with a rasping, urgent noise.

“Take it easy, man! It’s a tumbleweed, Hagen. That’s all it is, see. I
found you in a bunch of them down there. That’s what scratched you
up.” Even as he said it, Sanchez studied the deep grooves on the agent’s
cheeks that ran from his temple to his neck and were already beginning
to scab over.

“Yeah, tumbleweeds.” Hagen put his gun away. “Look, we gotta go
out there again. I’ve gotta see what the hell is going on. You understand?
I’ve gotta know. One minute they were there and the next... I’ve gotta
know if I’m crackin’ up or what.” For the first time Hagen noticed the
blood on Sanchez’s face. “What happened to you? Your face is cut up.”

“I fell in the damned cactus. I was chasing three of them. There’s gotta
be more. Let’s go, only this time we stay together.”

“Right.” Hagen paused. “Sanchez, you saw ’em, right? You get a good
look?”

“I couldn’t see anything except one was a woman, a Yaqui, I think,
and one guy was wearing white sneakers.”

Hagen fixed his partner with a searching look. His fear was infecting
Sanchez now. “Did they look, you know... regular to you?”

“I don’t know, man. I don’t know what you mean. I told you I barely
saw them at all. You sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah, forget it. Let’s go.”

They opened the doors against the wind.

Their heartbeats and the sound of their boots on the crushed stone of
the mesa filled the night.

At the edge of the canyon they both played their beams into the maw
of darkness. As if on cue, the wind rose again out of the abyss, tossing
dust and branches, bowing the manzanita first one way, then another,
as if frenziedly kowtowing to some rising monarch of the underworld.
Their lights created wild, protean shadows.

Sanchez saw them first, again. “Over here, Hagen!” He swung his
beam to the right, where sounds of sudden movement had drawn his
eyes. Several figures had been lying on the brush, just near the top of the
canyon. Now they rose and broke for the mesa, running past the two
men.

Sanchez gave chase to the one closest to him: a boy in white sneakers.

As he ran he heard Hagen’s voice in the distance. “I’ll turn on the
floodlights on the truck and call in. There’s too many.”

162 by John Brizzolara

Sanchez turned his head as he ran; he could just make out, against
the stars, dozens of figures to either side of him racing north in eerie
silence. He thought he saw the same Indian woman he had chased earlier,
but in the darkness it was impossible to be sure.

He lunged at the boy he was chasing, reaching out his hand toward
his jacket collar. He flew several feet and hit the ground, his fingers
closing on air.

When Sanchez looked up he saw a figure towering over him; a
Mexican wearing a straw ranchero’s hat and rags, on his face an impos¬
sibly wide grin. The man raised what looked like some kind of pale
garden tool over his head. He whispered at Sanchez in hoarse Spanish,
“The mesa is a lonely place to die, eh. La Migra?”

As the figure brought his arm down, Sanchez drew his gun. He fired
upward point-blank at the man’s chest area. In the brief flash from the
muzzle, Sanchez could see that his assailant had no weapon. The white,
clawlike tool was his hand and there was no flesh on it.

The image lingered on his retinas, echoing in his mind like the report
from the magnum, repeating and decaying through the canyons.

Suddenly, the mesa was bathed with light as Hagen threw on the
headlights and floodlamps mounted above the Ram Charger. Over the
loud hailer, he called, “Alto, por favor! La Migra! There is nowhere for
you to go. The sector ahead of you is...” He stopped. His words echoed,
carried on the wind, and died.

Hagen, like Sanchez, was looking out at the harshly illuminated
landscape that should have been covered with running men, women, and
children. There was nothing but tumbleweeds, more of them than either
of them had ever seen, being carried northward on the wind in oddly
graceful leaps, without a sound.

When Sanchez joined Hagen back at the truck, the radio was clamor¬
ing for their attention. Hagen ignored it, transfixed by the spectacle of
the migrating tumbleweed.

“Come in, 1028.1 can see you guys. What’s goin’ on? What are you
shootin’ at? Something wrong with your radio?”

Sanchez picked up the call. “Nine-oh-one, this is 1028. You scoping
us?”

“Yeah. What are you doing? I just watched you run about fifty yards,
jump in the air, land on your face, and fire a round at a ball of dead
weeds.”

Sanchez and Hagen looked at each other in silence. Finally Hagen
shook his head from side to side. Sanchez nodded in agreement and

Borderland 163

pressed the button on the side of the mike. “We got... uh, a bad visibility
situation here. The dust and the wind. We just, uh . . . thought we
detected, uh, activity. All’s quiet, though. Over.”

“Well, you might as well come on in and get coffee. You’re not going
to get anything now, not down there. We’re pickin’ ’em up everywhere
tonight but Dead Man’s. Since midnight it’s been Dia de Muertos and
there’s no coyote going to bring anyone through there for twenty-four
hours. You know how they are. Over.”

“Yeah. Over and out.”

“Dia de Muertos” Sanchez repeated. He lit a cigarette with shaking
hands. “November second.”

“Yeah.” Hagen kept his hands on the steering wheel to steady them.
“All Souls’ Day.”

“Day of the Dead.”

The tumbleweeds continued to dance in the headlights, occasionally
throwing themselves against the truck to whisper with dry, brittle voices.

The Scarecrow

Roger Johnson

Roger Johnson’s first published story, “The Wall-Painting,” was re¬
printed in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XII, and it attracted a
great deal of favorable comment. Johnson was another of August Derleth’s
discoveries, with three sonnets published in The Arkham Collector.
Following Derleth’s death, Johnson disappeared from the horror genre
for more than a decade, until Rosemary Pardoe coaxed him out of limbo.
Born in 1947, Johnson has lived most of his life in Chelmsford, Essex —
aside from five years at university and at library college (he took his
degree, B.A. Honours in English, from London University), and six years
living and working in Harlow New Town. Johnson is trying to devise some
sort of ghost appropriate for a new town.

“The Scarecrow” was entered some years back for the Times ghost
story competition. It failed to place—a distinction shared with Ramsey
Campbell’s “In the Bag” (which later won the British Fantasy Award for
best short fiction) and my own “Sing a Last Song ofValdese” (which the
previous editor, Gerald W. Page, selected for The Year’s Best Horror
Stories: Series V). Says Johnson of this story: “The references to tradi¬
tional folk song in ‘The Scarecrow’ reflect my long-time love of British
folksong and dance. A fair amount of my spare time is spent at my local
folksong clubs and in Morris dancing—not as healthy as jogging, perhaps,
but a sight more fun. ”

“Going abroad, are you?” said old George, incuriously.

“Not this year,” I replied. “Mike Williams and I are off to the Cotswolds
next month, for a couple of weeks. I came here tonight to tell him that
I’ve arranged for us to stay at a pub in a village near Banbury.”

“Oh, yes. Nice little town, Banbury. I rather envy you. What’s the name
of the village?”

“Saxton Lovell.”

“Good God!”

It is never a good thing to surprise a man while he is drinking. Old

165

166 Roger Johnson

George coughed and spluttered for a good half-minute. When he had
regained his breath he said: “Then the pub must be—-just a moment—the
Belchamp Arms?” (He pronounced it “Beecham”.)

“That’s right. Obviously you know it?”

“Oh, yes,” said George, very deliberately. “I know it all right, though
I’ve not been there for nearly fifty years. A little place, just off the road
to Chipping Norton. Heh? And some three miles to the west is a hamlet
called Normanton Lovell, which has one single and singular distinctive
feature.”

He paused, in that irritating way of his, and started filling his pipe.

“You’re being cryptic,” I said severely. “You’ve roused my curiosity
now, and I want to know why. Is there a story behind this?”

The old man smiled sheepishly. “I’m sorry, boy,” he said. “Yes, there’s
a story, though I’ve not told it in a long time. Ah, well. . . I’ll tell it to
you if you’ll be a good fellow and get me another pint. I think you’ll find
it worthwhile.”

I refilled both our glasses, and after we had taken a good long draught
I lit a cigarette and settled back to listen.

It happened while old George Cobbett was an undergraduate, reading
Classics at Fisher College, Cambridge, and in those days, of course, he
was by no means “old” George. His particular extra-curricular interest
then was in the archaeology of ancient Britain, a theme which met with
no approval at all from his tutor, and was therefore the more cherished.
His particular friend at Cambridge was another Classics scholar, one
Lionel Ager, who was privately devoted to the pursuit of English folklore.
Already, by the time he entered the University, he was a member of the
Folklore Society, and among his correspondents, as he told George, were
Alfred Williams and Frank Kidson, the great collectors of traditional
song.

George was in his second year at Fisher College when he learned of
the stone circles at Normanton Lovell, in Oxfordshire. William Stukely
seems not to have known of them, but in the college librarys copy of his
Itinerarium Antiquum George found a handwritten marginal note refer¬
ring to the Rollright Stones: “What of the Dancers of Normanton Lovell?
More like Abury than this nearer neighbor.”

The megalithic formations at Avebury (Stukeiys “Abury’) are unique,
as George well knew, both in their design and in their overwhelming
size. All the other stone circles that he knew of in Britain—always
excepting the uniquely complex structure of Stonehenge—were, like the

The Scarecrow 167

Rollright Stones, simple circles of free-standing megaliths, none of which
could approach the size or complexity of Avebury.

The riddle of the Dancers came again to his mind that evening, when
his friend observed that the long vacation was only three weeks away,
and that neither of them had yet made arrangements.

“I know that your people are abroad, Cobbett, and my father’s gone
to Carlsbad, so we’re our own masters at last. Now, I suggest that the
two of us go off to Oxfordshire for a few weeks.” (George was startled
by the coincidence). “I gather it’s a rare place for folksongs, which will
keep me occupied, and you should find enough of your precious Druid
stones to amuse you.” Lionel Ager could never be convinced that the
Druids were not responsible for Stonehenge and its fellows.

George took the suggestion as a good omen, and immediately pro¬
posed that Normanton Lovell should serve as their base for the holiday.
A perusal of the Ordnance Survey map of the area failed to prove the
existence of the village, but to George’s delight the stone circles were
clearly marked, and so was the nearby hamlet of Saxton Lovell, where
the usual symbol indicated a public house. The decision was made that
evening that the two of them would take rooms at the Belchamp Arms
(that, they subsequently discovered, was the name of the inn) at Saxton
Lovell for six weeks in June and July.

Arriving at the Belchamp Arms, they discovered that there actually
was a village of Normanton Lovell—if, that is, half a dozen houses
constitute a village. George did not regret his choice of accommodation,
however, for the Belchamp Arms was a fine example of the English
country inn. The rooms were scrupulously clean, the service cheerful,
the food good, and the beer excellent. The local farmers and laborers,
too, appreciated the beer, for they thronged the bar of an evening, so the
landlord said—an assertion which much pleased Lionel Ager.

The young men spent their first afternoon walking around the pleasant
little village, inspecting the romanesque church, and generally working
up an appetite for what proved to be a very rewarding dinner. Afterwards
they settled themselves in the lounge with a bottle of port, and Ager took
the opportunity to ask their host whether there were any notable singers
in the area.

“I don’t know,” replied the landlord, doubtfully, “that we’ve anyone
here that a scholar like yourself would care to hear. There’s Tommy
Wells, now, who plays the organ—he can sing fine, but I reckon all he
knows is hymns, and between ourselves that’s all right on Sundays, but
I reckon a man needs a change during the week.”

168 Roger Johnson

That, said Ager, was just what he meant. Did any of the farmworkers
or such people come into the inn and sing?

“Why, bless you, yes! If you don’t mind its not being polished like, just
you come into the bar a little later on. Old Harry Amold’ll be in about
eight—he’s got a fine, strong voice—and then there’s Dennis Poacher
and Percy Forrest and ...”

Laughing, the two friends assured him that it all sounded most
satisfactory. The landlord, gratified, left them, and they fell to talking of
those enigmatic stone circles that George planned to visit in the morning.

As they entered the bar, the landlord informed them that old Harry
had just arrived, and that was him sitting over there, the big, red-faced
man, and yes, surely he’d be pleased to sing for the gentlemen. Introduc¬
tions were made, and Harry Arnold indicated in the subtlest way possible
that he couldn’t sing without something to wet his throat. That attended
to, George sat back while his friend sat about drawing songs from the
obligingly extrovert farmer. Soon Lionel Ager himself had been drawn
into the singing, and he and Harry Arnold were swapping songs for all
the world as if they were old friends. Even George was induced to join
in the choruses, while the landlord grinned broadly behind his bar.

“I remember very little about the songs that were sung that evening,”
George told me, “though no doubt I’ve heard some of them many times
since. The one that clings to my mind was a very intense, very powerful
performance by Farmer Arnold of the ballad of John Barleycorn—the
death and resurrection of the corn. He shut his eyes and threw his head
back and sang as though every word and every note was forcing its way
up from the very bones of him. He well deserved the pint of beer that
the landlord gave him, and Ager’s almost tearful congratulations. It was
a remarkable performance, really remarkable.”

The next song, though was something quite different. Harry Arnold
took a deep draught from his mug and, mopping his forehead with a
large spotted handkerchief, called to a stocky, weatherbeaten man who
had been in the forefront of the choruses: “Dennis! Dennis Poacher! Give
us ‘Rolling of the Stones,’ will you? It’s a long time since I heard that,
boy, and I’d dearly like to hear it again.”

“Now that,” thought George, “is a damned queer name for a song.”
And his mind turned for an instant to the megalithic remains he had
come to see.

The stocky man began to sing in a clear and surprisingly gentle voice:
“Will you go to the rolling of the stones, the tossing of the ball... ?” A
curiously enigmatic and charming fragment—surely a mere part of a

The Scarecrow 169

S *

longer song. George’s thought was interrupted by the sympathetic voice
of Harry Arnold.

“Does me good to hear it again, sir, that does. But there’s no denying
it’s a strange sort of song. I can see you’re wondering at it, and so did I
when I first heard it. My mother used to sing that to me when I was a
little child, and I always used to wonder at that bit about ‘the rolling of
the stones.’ Of course, that’s plain when you think about it—they mean
fivestones—what my dad called knucklebones. But d’you know, the first
stones that come to my mind over that was those great rings over
Normanton way. Them, and that clump of ’em on our own farm—what
we call Hell’s Gate.”

George couldn’t help smiling. “Hell’s Gate!” There was a name to
conjure with! He was a little surprised to realize that, after all, with half
a bottle of port and more than a few pints of beer inside him he was really
not quite sober. If he were, he would not be attaching any weight to the
absurd name of a mere group of standing stones. He observed that on
the far side of the farmer, Lionel Ager’s attention was confusedly divided
between the singer (it was another singer now) and Harry Arnold. “Hell’s
Gate?” George repeated, hesitantly.

“That’s right,” said Harry. “Over in Nick’s Meadow, it is—though that’s
never been a meadow ever to my knowing. Always been ploughed over,
that has.” He looked around at the two young men, and his broad red
face broke into a grin, showing strong teeth. “You want to hear the story?
Well, why not? It’s quite a little ghost story, and it may interest you.”

He drained his mug and set it down on the table. “It’s this way, you
see—you know the name of this pub, the Belchamp Arms? Well, you
won’t find any Belchamps around here now, but for many long years they
was the lords of the manor. The head of the family was always called
Squire Belchamp, and it had to be Yes, Squire, and touch your cap, or by
God, he’d know why! Now, this man was the very last Squire Belchamp,
and he used to go over to them stones at night—without a by-your-leave
to the farmer, of course—and he’d do things there that, well, I reckon
they gave the name of Hell’s Gate to the stones. O’ course, all this was
something like a hundred years ago, now ...”

Sir Richard Belchamp, as Harry Arnold explained, was something
more than the traditional wicked squire. Certainly he was an unbending
autocrat, an eccentric to the point of madness. Equally certainly he had
a strong reputation as a whoremaster, and was rather less widely thought
to be a necromancer. Legends of his diverse misdeeds were not uncom¬
mon in the neighborhood even now, particularly the tale that Harry
Arnold told of the squire’s final sin, which led directly to his unmourned

170 Roger Johnson

death. He had been caught in a rather horrid act, at those same stones,
by the father of a young woman who was unwillingly involved. The father
was a farmer—in fact, the owner of the land where the megaliths
stood—and a man of few words and telling action. Being rightfully
incensed, he took a staff and quite simply beat the squire to death.

There must have been some juggling with the law, for at his trial the
farmer received the surprisingly lenient sentence of five years’ hard
labour. He accepted this fate with calm resignation, for he knew that
justice had already been served; whatever the law might do now could
not alter that fact. His sons were strong, and well able to care for the
farm in his absence. The one thing that troubled him was very slight at
first, but through the years in jail it grew, and it gnawed more and more
at his mind. Sir Richard Belchamp had cursed his killer as he died, and
the curse was an awful one: “Hell shall lie within your farm, and your
filthy scarecrow shall be its gateman!”

Yes, there was a scarecrow in Nick’s Meadow, a harmless thing, if old
and ugly. Still, the farmer’s sons had taken it down when they heard of
the squire’s words, and thrown it into a comer of the old bam, and there
it had lain, untouched but much thought of, through five long years.

The farmer was welcomed most heartily upon his release from jail.
Food and drink were provided in quantity, and all ate and drank—some
a little too freely, perhaps, for it seems that no one noticed just when, in
the early hours of the morning, the farmer left the house. He did not
return.

They found him some while after dawn, lying among the great stones,
crouched in an attitude of fear, though the fear did not show upon his
features, for the whole body was most terribly burned. Yet there was no
other evidence of a fire, and the night had been rainy. And the scarecrow?
Somehow or other the scarecrow had found its way back into its old place
in the middle of the field, and now stood, as large as life, staring with its
empty sockets at the appalling scene.

Harry Arnold smiled broadly and signaled to the landlord to refill his
mug. “Nice little story, ain’t it?” he said.

“Nice little—Ye gods!” thought George. “Interesting,” he ventured.

“Fascinating!” said Lionel Ager. His face was gleaming with the
disinterested delight of the scholar, and beads of sweat stood out on his
forehead. “Absolutely remarkable. So coherent...”

“These stones are still there?” he asked abruptly. “On your farm?”

“On my farm,” Harry Arnold agreed. “You see, that old farmer, he was
my great great grandfather.”

The Scarecrow 171

“Remarkable!” Ager exclaimed again. “And what of the scarecrow?”

“Well, I don’t suppose it’s the same one—not likely, is it?—but there’s
still a scarecrow in that field. We reckon to let well enough alone, and
every seed-time out he comes from the bam, and when he’s not needed
in the field, we put him back there. Matter o’ fact, we do tend to let him
stay in the field rather longer than needful. We reckon he belongs there,
and we want to do the right thing by him.”

George Cobbett did not like the way the conversation was tending. It
took a morbid turn, he thought, and he disliked the morbid, but I should
say that he had no presentiment of what would happen, and in any case
he didn’t believe in such warnings. He was very young.

His friend continued to question the farmer. Had there been other
evidence of this gateway to Hell? he asked—but Harry was vague upon
that point, and unwilling to commit himself. It was true that over the
decades some people had disappeared or died mysteriously, but that may
happen anywhere. No, nothing certain could be said.

Ager fell silent, and George took the opportunity to steer the conver¬
sation toward the stone circles at Normanton Lovell. They were still
engrossed in that subject when the landlord firmly called “Time!” and
amid a clattering of heavy boots, a jingling of glasses, and a cheerful buzz
of talk the bar started to empty. Harry gave the young men his enormous
hand, and expressed the hope that they’d meet again next day. And so
Harry Arnold set off home, and George Cobbett and Lionel Ager—the
later still preoccupied—went upstairs to bed.

At breakfast, Ager’s first words were: “Do you realize that it’s Midsum¬
mer Eve in six days’ time?”

“What of it?” replied George.

“Just this: that Midsummer Eve is rather like Hallowe’en, when ghosts
and witches walk abroad.”

With an expressive snort, George returned to his bacon and eggs, but
stopped abruptly when he realized his friend’s implication. “Oh, God!
You don’t mean that you’re going to follow up Farmer Arnold’s ghost
story?”

“I mean that we are going to follow up Harry’s story.”

“We most certainly are not! I came down here to look at megalithic
remains, and that’s what I’m going to do. You can go ghost-hunting if
you like, but count me out.”

George was adamant on this, though he could see that his friend was
disappointed. Lionel Ager was equally adamant. “I can’t pass up a chance
like this,” he said. “Don’t you see how important it is? The Folklore

172 RogerJohnson

Society will be delighted to get this story, but it must be investigated
properly. Even if you won’t come with me—and even if Harry Arnold
won’t agree—on Midsummer Eve I’m going to Nick’s Meadow to see if
anything happens.”

“All that will happen is that you’ll catch pneumonia,” observed George,
but he was uneasy, all the same.

It was agreed after breakfast that George should accompany his friend
to Nick’s Meadow. They both, after all, wanted to see the stones that
Farmer Arnold so picturesquely called Hell’s Gate, but George’s interest
was purely archaeological, and he had no wish to see the demon
scarecrow.

“I did see it, though,” he told me. “And I can see it now, quite clearly.
It was a horrid, tatty-looking thing, with most of the straw stuffing gone
from it. The clothes, too—I don’t know how they held together. They
were threadbare and rotten. I think that the coat had once been black,
but it was a dull, nasty green now. For all I know, they might have
belonged to the original scarecrow, back in Sir Richard’s day. And the
face—my God! The head had been carved from a turnip, and it was all
shriveled and wizened, but there was a distinct and rather frightening
expression. The half-moon grin and the vacant eye-sockets combined to
give a look of utter and menacing idiocy!”

Even Lionel Ager was glad to turn his attention to the group of stones
that stood on the western side of the field. Their curious formation held
a different interest for each of the young men; to George the central
stones were possibly of unique archaeological importance, as the only
genuine trilithon he knew of in Britain outside Stonehenge, but to Ager
the shape formed by one massive stone lying as a lintel on two great
megalithic posts served to reinforce the idea of a gateway. “Hell’s Gate!”
he muttered. “Hell’s Gate indeed! Cobbett—” (he turned abruptly to
George), “I simply can’t miss this opportunity. Are you quite sure you
won’t come and watch with me?”

George thought of the scarecrow’s face, and furiously dismissed the
image from his mind. “I won’t come,” he said. “It’s a very silly business,
and besides, I see no fun in spending the night in a field when there’s a
comfortable bed back at the inn.”

Ager merely grunted. Evidently his own determination was fixed, and
Midsummer Eve would see him in Nick’s Meadow, watching for the
gateway to Hell. From then on the matter seemed to bar all other ideas
from his mind. This was to be a major contribution to folklore, and not
until he had seen it through would he return to more mundane matters.

He made no demur at George’s suggestion that they go and look at

The Scarecrow 173

the stones of Normanton Lovell, some two miles away, but he spoke little
as they walked along the narrow roads, and his thoughts were set on
Nick’s Meadow and Hell’s Gate.

Harry Arnold was not well pleased when Ager told him of his plan,
but he could give no concrete or coherent reason why the young man
should not stay the haunted night in the haunted field. Seeing that his
advice to “leave well enough alone” had no effect, he grudgingly acqui¬
esced. “You’d go anyway,” he observed, “so you may as well go with my
permission.”

When Midsummer Eve came around, he came into the Belchamp Arms
looking rather embarrassed, and carrying a shotgun. “You’ve forced an
argument on me,” he said, “and for your own sake I’ll force one on you.
You’ll take this gun with you tonight. I don’t know that it’ll be of
protection to you, but it may be, and I’ll sleep sounder for knowing you
have it.”

Rather reluctantly, Ager took the weapon, and thanked the farmer for
his concern. Harry had not finished, though. “There’s one more thing. I
want you to promise that you’ll stay on the east side of the field—away
from the stones.” To George’s surprise, and rather to his relief, Ager
agreed, smiling wryly as he saw the farmer’s face clear. “Good lad,” said
Harry, and clapped him on the back.

Even so, Harry insisted upon accompanying Ager from the inn at
closing time, so that he could be sure when he went to his bed that the
young man was keeping to the agreement. George approved of this
notion, and when the landlord called time he went with them to Nick’s
Meadow. He could do nothing more, save offer to share the vigil, and he
was not prepared to do that.

With Ager settled fairly comfortably on a traveling rug, the shotgun
and a flask of whiskey beside him, good-byes were said, and George
Cobbett and Harry Arnold went their ways.

George had difficulty in sleeping at first. Although he was very tired,
his mind was so full that there seemed no room for sleep. Curiously,
whenever he shut his eyes, one image predominated, making a clear
picture, so disturbing that he had to open them again. It was as if he sat
alone on the eastern side of Nick’s Meadow, gazing across the field at
the strange cluster of menhirs, and seeing the gateway formed by the
trilithon, which stood out clearly among them. It was odd that the stones
appeared so sharply to his inner eye, for in fact he could see nothing
else—nothing at all. The blackness that covered all—all but that unpleas¬
antly distinct image of Hell’s Gate—was so very black as to be the

174 Roger Johnson

darkness of the tomb rather than of night. It was almost like a living
thing, and it hid everything but those damnable stones.

No, not quite everything, as he discovered the fourth or fifth time that
his eyelids involuntarily closed. Far off, by the stones, and silhouetted
against their very distinct image, seeming tiny by comparison, was an
awkwardly moving figure. It was more human than animal, as far as he
could tell, and yet not quite human either. It was walking in a very
unnatural manner, almost, he reflected, like a wooden doll that is made
to caricature its young owner’s gauche stride.

By the time George Cobbett realized that the gaunt figure’s awkward
movement was bringing it rapidly through the stygian blackness toward
him, he was struggling to stay awake. But our bodies at their best respond
perversely to our minds, and George found himself fitfully dozing, and
observing with something like terror the progress of the black, featureless
creature across the black, featureless field. As it drew nearer, he found
that it brought with it waves of heat, as though furnace doors had been
opened—an evil-smelling heat, but with no accompanying light. What¬
ever illuminated the stones remained itself hidden, and still no features
could be discerned on the gothic silhouette that approached him.

Yet something about it—something in that damnably sharp, gaunt
outline—scratched at the doors of memory in his brain, and he fought
against recognition, while knowing that it could make no ultimate
difference.

The heat became—not unbearable, for he bore it—but, like that
appalling darkness, it seemed to take on a life of its own, a pulsating life,
as though it was generated by some great, unimaginable heart. The figure
came ever closer, its stride implacable and unhindered. It moved so
stiffly, as though it had no knee-joints. Its arms were spread wide, as
though fixed in a mockery of benediction. Its head—ah! its head was
small and round, wrinkled and very, very old. Rank shreds and tatters
of clothing flapped from its thin frame, and now he could see coals of
fire within the deep eye-sockets, as finally it stood before him, and the
crushing waves of heat brought with them great gusts of a mirthless
laughter.

The doors broke open, and George Cobbett awoke, screaming, to find
himself alone and secure in his room at the Belchamp Arms. Almost
sobbing with relief, he lay back on his pillow and expelled his breath in
a long sigh. God, what a dream! And what a story to tell Ager in the
morning! He smiled a little at the unexpected depths of his own imagi¬
nation, and, feeling sleep approaching again, he turned onto his side and
let it come.

The Scarecrow 175

He slept easily this time, falling almost immediately into a dreamless
slumber, and did not wake again until a heavy knocking at his door
aroused him at about half-past-six. Only half-awake, he climbed from his
bed and opened the door to his untimely visitors. A yawn became a gasp
of incredulity as he saw the urgent faces of the landlord and Harry
Arnold, the latter biting his lip nervously, but with fear in his eyes.

The farmer had risen early as usual that Midsummer morning, and
gone straight to Nick’s Meadow to see how Lionel Ager had fared. In the
meadow he had found Ager’s body, and he had stood, looking at it, for
a long horrible moment, unable to move. It lay between the uprights of
the trilithon—Hell’s Gate indeed!—and it was hideously burned. The
whole corpse was blackened and charred, and still smoking a little, and
the face was quite unrecognizable. The hands, clutching the twisted
frame of the shotgun, had actually broken around the weapon.

“I couldn’t touch it,” said Harry, later. “And I dared not, for fear it
would crumble into ash.”

And yet, despite the condition of the body, Lionel Ager’s clothes were
quite unharmed, except that they were damp with the summer dew.

Harry Arnold had turned and shook his great fist at the scarecrow.
“Old devil!” he cried. And then he saw that the scarecrow had somehow
been turned around during the night, and now stood facing the group of
standing stones. On its turnip face, the crudely carved features no longer
wore their customary vacant aspect, but had twisted themselves into an
expression of malign triumph.

My cigarette had long since burned itself out in the ashtray, and I had
hardly touched my beer. Old George’s hands were shaking a little as he
fumbled with his tobacco pouch and pipe. I knew that anything I could
say would be inadequate, but I said it anyway: “That’s quite astonishing.
Quite astonishing.”

George was silent for a moment, while he re-lit his pipe. When he had
it drawing to his satisfaction, he looked up and stared gloomily at me.
“It was a pretty village,” he said. “And those stones were really remark¬
able. But you can understand now why I’ve never been back there.”

The End of the World

James B. Hemesath

James B. Hemesath responded to my request for background informa¬
tion with some interesting notes on the history of his story, “The End of
the World,”published in WIND/Literary Journal.

“I was born April 25, 1944, in New Hampton, Iowa. After high school
I spent three years in the Marine Corps. I’m married (Myrna) and I have
a seven-year-old son (Chad). My higher education includes a Master of
Fine Arts in English from the University of Iowa Writers Workshop.
Currently, I’m the Librarian at Western Montana College, Dillon, Mon¬
tana. Before that, I was the Librarian at Huron College, Huron, South
Dakota. The End of the World’ was written during my stay in South
Dakota. A shorter, much earlier version of this story (with a different
title) received an honorable mention in the annual Writer’s Digest fiction
competition. Yet another early version of the story helped in my receiving
a $500 fiction-writing grant from the South Dakota Arts Board. All
told — I’ve been writing for approximately twenty years; in recent times.
I’ve turned out one, maybe two new stories yearly. During any given year
I spend a lot of time rethinking/rewriting stories from previous years.
The End of the World, ’for example, was written one year, then rewritten
and expanded over a two- or three-year period. As you might guess — I’m
not prolific. ”

Hemesath has had short fiction published in Again, Dangerous Vi¬
sions, as well as in Fantasy Book, Eldritch Tales, Just Pulp, Coe Review,
Dare, Blue Light Review, and Each Step I Take. He also reviews fiction
for Library Journal.

He had counted telephone poles for the first hour; next, farm houses;
finally, deserted farm houses. Ralph Watson stared through the bug-
splattered windshield. In the shimmering distance along a two-lane
highway that ran straight as a rifle barrel, a solitary grain elevator rose
from the surrounding dusty-green earth like the front sight of a high-
powered rifle. Next to him his wife, Jane, pondered the television listings

177

178 James B. Memesath

in a New York Times that she had brought with her. She wore a red halter
top and blue gym shorts. A leather sandal hung from the big toe of her
crossed leg.

“Are you sure they have public television?”

“The night before the interview,” Ralph said, “I watched Dance in
America in my hotel room. Baryshnikov.”

“That was on in New York months ago.”

“I probably saw a re-run.”

“I doubt it.”

“It’s summer, Jane.”

“Tell me about it!”

“I don’t want to fight.” Ralph pondered the grain elevator. It didn’t
seem any closer. Poor Jane! He increased the pressure of his foot on the
gas pedal. The speedometer crept past 60 mph. She wanted to be at her
father’s summer house in Vermont. Instead, they were en route to Ralph’s
new position as academic dean at a college that neither of them had
heard of a month ago.

Two weeks ago Redemption College had flown Ralph from New York
to the interview. On the final hop of a late afternoon flight from
Minneapolis-St. Paul, he had shielded his eyes to look out the tiny
window next to his seat. The wing tip of the Republic Convair, trans¬
formed by the sun into a fiery knife point, cut through the airy void. The
Great Plains unrolled beneath his feet like a bolt of dull green cloth. An
enormous world with plenty of elbow room for an ambitious young man.

Driving across those same plains was something else. The flat coun¬
tryside rolled past like a conveyor belt. Overhead, the late-August sun
rode roughshod through a cloudless sky. Ralph drove with his elbow out
the window. It glistened with suntan lotion. A white bath towel draped
across the window sill protected his upper arm from the scorching metal.

In the endless fields alongside the highway, the knee-high corn stirred
in the stiff, hot breeze. Ralph wondered if it was dead of the drought. No
rain for weeks, the TV weatherman had said the night before in their
motel room in Sioux Falls. If one stopped the car and listened, the leafy
stalks crackled in the breeze—a sound like the breaking of tiny bones.
Ralph imagined the com stalks turning to dust before his eyes.

“Look at those pathetic trees,” Jane said, pointing at the ragged,
thin-ranked cottonwoods that protected yet another deserted farm house
from the prevailing wind. They were stunted, dying of thirst, slump¬
shouldered. Ralph pretended to ignore her. Still, in the yard of that
abandoned and windowless farm house, he had seen a load of tattered

The End of the World 179

wash on the clothes line. He wondered how many years ago it had been
put out to dry and forgotten.

Ralph pressed the gas pedal still harder—69, 70, 71 mph.

“Dad!” Ralph glanced at the rear view mirror. His six year old son,
Bobby, stared back. Slashes of red warpaint colored his face. The work
of a felt-tip marker. A souvenir turkey feather jutted from his blond hair.
“You’re going too fast.”

Ralph eased his foot off the gas.

Fifteen minutes later, the highway he had traveled since mid-morning
ended abruptly at a T-intersection with a north-south highway. Straight
ahead was the dazzlingly-white, monolithic grain elevator that Ralph
had pursued for miles. A gas station squatted in its shadow. To get to
Redemption, where Ralph’s job was, he would have to go north.

“I better fill the tank.”

“Ralph, I hope the bathroom’s clean,” said Jane, slipping into a t-shirt.
It sounded like a threat.

“I’m thirsty. Dad!”

Ralph pulled away from the bullet-riddled stop sign, across the north-
south highway, and into the dusty parking lot. A brand-new, electronic
gas pump offered both regular and unleaded. The building was two-
story, flat-roofed, a pile of cement blocks. Sometime ago those blocks
had been painted bam red, but the color had weathered to a rusty brown.
besserman’s gas & grocery was painted in wobbly black letters across the
top two rows.

Ralph honked.

Turning toward Jane, he saw that she had hunched her shoulders to
diminish the size of her breasts. He felt guilty about taking the job.

He switched off the ignition. The motor ran on for several seconds,
missing and sputtering, shaking them like cans of paint.

“I turned it off too fast,” he explained.

Bobby agreed with him from the back seat.

Jane said nothing.

He tried to relax.

Swirls of dusk pirouetted across the parking lot. He grinned: Dance in
South Dakota. A grasshopper, landing on the windshield, seemed to stare
at him through the dirty glass, its tiny jaws moving up-&-down like a
ventriloquist’s dummy. Two more landed. Ralph wondered what they
ate during a drought. His mood darkened. He pushed the wiper button
and swept them away.

He honked again.

Moments later, a thin-faced man in bib overalls stepped from the cool

180 James B. liemesath

darkness of the service bay. Behind him, perched atop the hydraulic lift,
was a piece of farm equipment that Ralph didn’t recognize. He would
have to learn more about farming. The man stroked and twisted his jaw.
He probably had false teeth. His now smiling face was a maze of cracks
and crevices that mirrored the condition of the bone-dry countryside. His
dusty yellow hair looked as if it had been combed straight-back by the
wind. Ralph pretended to study the contents of his billfold. No doubt
Jane stared straight-ahead, while Bobby stared directly at the man.

Ralph looked up. “Fill it with unleaded,” he said.

“Sure thing, mister.” The man braced himself against the car, his body
tilted, his eroded face inches from Ralph’s. “You’re the first New York
plates I’ve seen this summer.”

“Glad to be in South Dakota,” Ralph said, trying to be friendly.

“I’ve been to New York. I was there during the war.” He poked a greasy
hand at Ralph. “My name’s Cletus Besserman. Army. I shipped out of
Brooklyn in 1944 ...”

“We’re from Utica,” Ralph said, shaking hands, “that’s upstate ...”

“Same difference,” Cletus Besserman said. “I’ve been to England,
France, and Germany. After the war, I met a cousin who lived in
Dusseldorf. She hated Hitler. That didn’t surprise me. My dad hated
Hoover.”

%

Ralph nodded.

“Where you headed? Mount Rushmore?” Shreds of tobacco glistened
between his snowy teeth. “Be sure to stop at Wall Drug.”

“We’ve seen the signs,” Ralph said. “Free ice water ...”

“I’m an Indian,” Bobby blurted from the back seat.

“No, you’re not,” the man snapped, mopping his face with his greasy
hand. “I know one of them when I see one.” His smile faded. “I damn
well do.”

“The boy’s just playing,” Ralph said. “I told him that South Dakota has
a lot of Native Americans.”

“West of here, west of Redemption, across the Missouri River.”

“I want to be an Indian,” Bobby said, “I want to be Tonto.”

The man stared open-mouthed at Bobby.

“We’re going to Redemption,” Ralph said, trying to change the subject.
“I’m with Redemption College.”

“Ralph,” Jane said, “I want to get going.”

“Don’t you have to?”

“No!”

“Well, I do.” He opened the door, edging the man back. “Come on,
Bobby! We’ve got a long drive ahead of us. Let’s get a soda.”

The End of the World 181

Jane flung open her car door and got out.

Cletus Besserman said, “The washroom’s inside, ma’am. It’s the door
between the bread rack and the beer. Coke costs a quarter. There’s a
nickel deposit if you take the bottle.”

Jane said nothing.

Ralph nodded. His body ached and swayed. The sun and heat buckled
his knees, while the wind kept him from falling. Jane grumbled and
sweated at his side. They hurried into the shade cast across the gas station
by the grain elevator. It was the difference between night and day.
Turning, Ralph saw Cletus Besserman and Bobby in conversation.

Why had he stopped here? Jane would be out for blood all the way to
Redemption, his blood.

“Come here, Bobby!” Ralph grinned like a Cheshire cat to hide his
irritation. “Get the windshield, too. Okay, Mr. Besserman?”

“Sure thing.” Besserman nudged the child toward them. Bobby kicked
at the dust. It swirled about his shoulders and legs like a blanket, and he
gasped for breath.

Jane rushed several feet into the sunshine, grabbed Bobby by the arm,
then retreated.

“What did he want?” she whispered. By the urgency in her voice, Ralph
knew that she would turn on him next.

“Tell us,” he demanded, “or you don’t get a soda.” He wanted to keep
peace with Jane. He grabbed Bobby by the shoulders and shook him.

“No need to get worked up.” Cletus Besserman stood just outside the
rim of darkness. “I was just telling your boy the truth.”

“The truth about what?” Ralph said, grinding his teeth together. He
felt a little foolish. Maybe he should punch Jane in the nose. “We’d like
to hear what you told him.”

“Good,” Cletus Besserman said, “I’m glad to hear that.” He coughed,
clearing his throat of the swirling dust. “When I was your boy’s age, my
dad and I—God rest his parched bones—drove his Model-T truck to
Mobridge, then across the Missouri onto the Standing Rock reservation.
To make a long story short—my dad sold me to a medicine man. A lot
of farmers and ranchers did the same thing that summer. 1934. They
had to. We needed the rain.”

“That’s some childhood, Mr. Besserman.” Ralph forced a smile and
pushed open the door to the grocery. The air conditioning hit him like a
blizzard. He motioned Jane and Bobby in after him. Mr. Besserman
followed.

“It’s pretty dry this summer,” he said. “You wouldn’t want to sell that
boy, would you?”

182 James B. Hemesath

“No thanks,” Ralph said, “I like him too much.”

Jane glared at Ralph. He nudged her toward the bathroom.

“That’s the problem today. Folks don’t have enough kids to spare one
or two.”

A color TV was mounted on the wall opposite the cash register. Jane
had stopped momentarily to stare at her favorite soap opera. She and
Bobby were now in the restroom.

Ralph heard Bobby’s complaint, the rush of running water, Jane’s
harsh voice. He surveyed the room. The wall beneath the TV was
plastered with posters for farm and livestock auctions. Nearby was a
glass-faced wooden cabinet that offered an assortment of rifles and
shotguns for sale. Maybe he should buy a gun. Another wall was
decorated with fishing poles for sale. Ralph grunted at the irony of that.
Meanwhile, Mr. Besserman dutifully checked Ralph’s credit card against
a list of stolen and canceled cards.

Ralph kept his distance.

Bobby emerged from the bathroom, his face scrubbed clean and the
feather gone. He was fighting back tears. Ralph gave him a quarter.

Bobby whined, “I want to be an Indian ...”

“Shut up,” Ralph said, “just shut up.”

He waited for the sound of Jane flushing the toilet. They met at the
doorway. “Bobby’s playing pinball,” he said. Her eyes were glazed. She
had taken a Valium. “It’ll be okay,” he said, “you’ll see.”

“I doubt it,” she said.

The bathroom was as he had imagined: dirty. He flipped up the toilet
seat. A bumper sticker was stuck piecemeal to the underside: EAT LAMB!
10,000 COYOTES CAN’T BE WRONG! He hoped Jane hadn’t seen that.
She would never eat mutton again.

In the end, Jane delayed their departure to watch the final few minutes
of her soap opera. She seemed calmer. Mr. Besserman followed the three
of them outside. The windshield was still dirty.

“Forget it,” Ralph said.

“No trouble,” said Mr. Besserman. He took great care with the wind¬
shield, washing it, chipping the dead bugs with an ice scraper, then
washing it again.

“Thanks much,” Ralph said.

“Just keep in mind what I said.”

“Right.”

“It’s a dry summer.”

“Right.”

“Your boy could make a difference.”

The End of the World 183

“Fuck you!” shouted Jane.

A stunned Ralph hit the gas. My God! He was the academic dean at
Redemption College. What if this guy knew somebody on the board of
trustees? Cletus Besserman disappeared into a cloud of dust and grass¬
hoppers. He could only hope for the best. The rear view mirror was greasy
with his fingerprints. They had been on the road a long time.

After a few miles, Jane said, “That man wasn’t kidding. He wanted to
buy Bobby.”

“Don’t be silly,” Ralph said. “He’s been out in the sun too long.”

Just the same, Ralph pushed the gas pedal a little harder. Bobby sat
quietly in the back seat drinking a bottle of soda. He looked a little dazed.

“I hate that word,” Jane said. “I hate it when you swear. I don’t know
why I said it. I hate that word.”

Ralph nodded. He couldn’t think of anything funny to say. He wished
now that he had taken her along for the interview. They could have sat
in the hotel room watching public television. Perhaps that would have
been enough to convince her that this was not the end of the world.
Perhaps she would have persuaded him not to take the job. An occasional
car or truck passed going in the opposite direction. A semi pulled up from

O

behind, honked twice, then swung nerve-wrackingly around them at far
beyond the speed limit. Stunted com, dead-brown pasture land and
deserted farm houses floated past. One house with its sagging front porch
resembled an old man without his false teeth. The window sills of yet
another were just inches above the ground. Perhaps the earth was
swallowing it.

Reaching to turn on the radio, Ralph took his eyes off the road. He
didn’t see what it was he hit, just heard a solid thud, then felt it bounce
once, twice against the undercarriage of the car.

“What was that?” asked Jane, her attention distracted from the Times
crossword puzzle.

Jumping to his feet, Bobby stared out the rear window. “You hit
something.” He started to cry.

“Don’t stand on the back seat,” shouted Ralph. “I’m tired of telling you
that!” Braking to a gentle stop, Ralph pulled off the road. He took a deep
breath, then put the car into reverse.

Whatever it was—the size of a full-grown dachshund—it was still
alive. The creature emitted a high-pitched squeal.

“A jack rabbit,” Ralph said, “you can tell by the size of its ears and hind
legs.”

They didn’t get out of the car.

“I’m not going to be sick,” Jane said. “I’m not.”

184 James B. Hemesath

Bobby glared at Ralph. “You were going too fast.”

“Be quiet,” said Ralph.

The jack rabbit lay stretched-out on the highway. Its ruby-colored guts
shone against the white concrete in the late-aftemoon sun. Broken bones
like knitting needles protruded from the tom flesh and fur. The eye that
Ralph could see blinked with the bothersome regularity of a fluttering
TV picture.

“What should we do?” asked Bobby.

“Take it to a vet,” said Jane.

Ralph groaned, thinking of the inside of the car.

While they argued, a late-model, four-wheel-drive pickup truck with
Besserman’s Gas & Grocery printed on the door stopped across the highway
from them. An angular section of welded steel with several trowel-like
blades was chained to the truck bed. Probably a replacement part for the
piece of farm equipment that Ralph hadn’t recognized. Ralph hoped this
particular Besserman or whoever he was wouldn’t be as spooky as Cletus.

“Have car trouble?” It was a boy about fifteen.

“Sort of.” Ralph hesitated.

From the blind side of the truck, a mongrel German Shepherd bolted
across the driver’s lap and through the open window, landing squarely
on all fours on the pavement. He bared his teeth, growling from deep
inside his throat. It sounded like a buzz saw cutting through hardwood.

“Damn you, Cody!” the boy cursed. “Get back in here.”

The dog charged the rabbit, biting into its tom midsection, violently
shaking it from side-to-side like a hunk of raw meat. Both Jane and Bobby
screamed. A shower of blood cascaded across the pavement, staining the
dead-brown grass at the edge of the road. Poxlike drops of blood spotted
Ralph’s arm and the white towel. He wondered what the side of his car
looked like. The truck was spotted with blood. The boy wiped blood from
his face with a blue handkerchief. He was out of the truck, stalking
toward the dog. He kicked it hard in the ribs. Again. The dog cowered
at his feet, the rabbit forgotten.

“I thought you were out of gas,” the boy complained. His white t-shirt
was flecked with blood. “If I’d known you’d hit a jack, I wouldn’t have
bothered to stop.”

“We’re new out here,” Ralph said.

“I hope I didn’t hurt Cody.” The boy’s hair hung in his eyes. The wind
hadn’t yet combed it straight-back or carved character into his bland face.
He nudged the dog with his boot. “Get into the truck, Cody!” The dog
obeyed.

“Is Cletus Besserman your father?”

The End of the World 185

“So you stopped at the station,” the boy said, turning a small smile for
the first time. “No, I just work for Cletus. He owns that and the grain
elevator. He’s a little crazy these days with the drought. The elevator’s
been empty for two years. The bank’s ready to foreclose. Did he offer to
buy your boy?”

Ralph nodded.

“It figures. He’s been pestering my dad about me, too. Cletus wants to
go out on the reservation and talk some half-drunk Indian into a rain
dance. Cletus’ old man sold him to the Indians when he was a boy. Lots
of people did it back then during the Great Depression. My dad says
there’s a state law that forbids it now.”

“Did it rain?” Ralph asked.

“I don’t know.”

“What happened to the children?” Ralph felt Bobby’s fingernails dig
into his neck. Perhaps this would cure him of wanting to be an Indian.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “My dad says that Cletus ran away. Maybe
the Indians raised the others as their own. Maybe the dogs ate them. I
don’t know.”

For the next couple of hours, Ralph drove the speed limit. He kept
both hands on the steering wheel, checked his side view and rear view
mirrors. He thought about Cletus Besserman and the drought. Bobby
slept uneasily in the back seat. Jane said nothing, lost again in the nearly
week-old New York Times.

In the west, the setting sun was turning the horizon into a river of
blood. Ralph wished he had a camera. The photo might win a prize.

A few miles later, Ralph hit a prairie dog with his right front tire. Jane
didn’t notice. The tiny crunch sounded like a bite taken out of an apple.

Eventually, Ralph started to count.

“Four, five, six ... ”

“What are you doing?” asked Jane.

“Counting.”

“Counting what? Empty houses?”

“No, I’m counting the dead animals on the highway.”

“That’s crazy,” Jane shouted, not looking up from the Times crossword
puzzle. “So just stop it.”

Ralph drove deeper and deeper into the twilight haze. His eyes ached
and burned. You’re right, he said to himself. I’ve been driving too long.
He pushed the gas pedal to the floor. They had best get to Redemption
as quickly as possible. Certainly before nightfall. In the rear view mirror
he thought he saw another car in the far distance. For the next few miles
he stared straight-ahead at the highway. He started counting the dead

186 James B. Hemesath

animals again. He killed yet another prairie dog. Rechecking the mirror
he saw that the car was a pickup truck, the same dirty green as the boy’s.

Ralph pushed the gas pedal still harder. He imagined his foot breaking
through the floorboards and striking the concrete. Shreds of shoe leather,
bits of bone and flesh, and a shower of blood splattered his blue jeans.
The pickup truck had inched closer. Behind it he saw Indians on
horseback, their naked bodies streaked with paint.

“Jane,” he said, “something’s wrong, something’s terribly wrong.” He
glanced at his wife. She was slumped against the door. No doubt she had
taken another Valium. Maybe two or three. He knew better than to try
to wake her. She would be groggy, dazed, more of a problem than a
solution. He thought of waking Bobby.

The pickup truck and the Indians were gaining. Straight ahead the
highway was dotted with the remains of dead animals. He swerved to
avoid something not-quite-yet dead. Probably a farmer’s dog or a coyote.
In the rear view mirror he saw it get up from the pavement and join in
the pursuit.

“Bobby,” he said, half-turning to shake his son in the back seat.
“Wake-up!”

The kid grunted, trying to dig himself deeper into the seat cushion.
Ralph tried again. This time he grabbed Bobby by the waist and shook
him. He pulled his hand away in frustration. The damned kid had wet
his pants! It was hopeless, he thought, I’ll have to go it alone.

In a few minutes it would be night, the sun finally dropping below the
edge of the prairie. Ralph braced the steering wheel with his knees and
rubbed his eyes with both hands. I’m hallucinating, he thought, I know
that. When I open my eyes there will be nothing but highway behind us.

A fraction of a second before the impact, Ralph opened his eyes and
flung his hands against the windshield to hold it in place. He was
reaching into a spider’s web. A nightmare explosion of glass washed
across his body. He had hit something, something big. Probably a cow.
The shaggy brown creature had erupted from the pavement and some¬
how landed on the hood, its great head and horns shattering the
windshield. Ralph remembered the eyes. They were yellow like the
headlights of an approaching car and angry. Perhaps he had hit a car,
perhaps the pickup truck and somehow gotten ahead of him and had
been blocking the road. He imagined Cletus Besserman reaching out to
take Bobby from them.

“You’re okay, sir.” Ralph stared into the pimply face of an ambulance
attendant. He was not confused. He remembered what had happened.
They had been in an accident.

The End of the World 187

“We’re going to get you into Redemption, to the hospital.”

A rainbow of harsh lights lit up the accident scene. Some flashed
on-&-off like the neon beer signs at Besserman’s Gas & Grocery. Ralph
was on a stretcher. He stared straight-up into the black night sky.

“They hit a buffalo,” someone said.

“Got loose, wandered onto the highway,” someone else said.

“Belongs to Charley Birdsong,” the first voice said. “He raises them for
meat.”

“That damned Indian.”

Ralph shuddered beneath the blanket. He strained against the belts
that held him to the stretcher. He hadn’t been alone in the car. They
hadn’t mentioned Jane or Bobby.

“My family,” he said, “what about my wife and son?”

“She’s okay,” the attendant said. There was a pause. “Don’t worry
about the boy. He’s in good hands, the best hands.”

Ralph stared straight-up into the black night sky.

A raindrop splashed on his forehead. He had seen it coming, then
another and another. They fell out of the black night into the garish dome
of light.

Bobby was dead.

A clap of thunder was followed by a downpour. The icy-cold rain
washed the blood from his face. Bobby was dead and it was raining.

“Next stop Redemption,” someone said.

Ralph almost laughed at the irony of that.

The stretcher was lifted from the ground and slid into the ambulance.

Ralph heard the rain drumming on the roof.

He tried to block the sound out of his mind.

He clenched his teeth.

He prayed that Bobby was still alive, that Jane was still beautiful, that
none of this was happening.

“There’s been a drought for months, for years,” the ambulance atten¬
dant said. The pimply-faced kid paused, getting himself comfortable next
to Ralph. “Thank God for the rain.”

Never Grow Up

John Gordon

There seems to exist some unwritten rule against including more than
one story by any one author in an anthology (unless under the disguise
of a pseudonym). This taboo has never been a problem with The Year’s
Best Horror Stories, inasmuch as a good writer may well publish several
outstanding stories within a given year. In the past, Harlan Ellison,
Ramsey Campbell, and Brian Lumley have each appeared twice in the
same volume of The Year’s Best Horror Stories. John Gordon has now
joined that distinguished list of authors who have written two of the year’s
finest horror stories.

“Never Grow Up” is another story from Gordon’s collection, Catch Your
Death and Other Ghost Stories. By no means a children’s book, the
collection deserves recognition as a superior book of horror stories”rang-
ingfrom “The Pot of Basil” (a story M. R. James would have been proud
to have written) to the disquieting psychological horror of “Never Grow
Up” (which would be quite at home in Charles L. Grant’s noted Shadows
series).

Me Mum is very good looking. Everyone says so. ’Specially me dad. And
it ain’t just men, but men mainly. She love it when she see a man. I see
her eyes go blacker when a man come along—it don’t matter who he is
or how old he is, or even if he’s a kid like me, her eyes go black
black—know what I mean?—with a kind of sparkle they’re so deep black,
and her mouth go squashy. It do. It used to go squashy for me when I
was very little. Not now.

“You changed,” she say to me one day. “You changed the instant you
was thirteen.”

“Well I can’t help that, can I?” I say to her. “Everyone get older. Even
you.”

That had her. She didn’t like that.

“Trouble with you is,” she say, “you gone all bony and ugly, I see that

189

190 John Gordon

the instant you come to be thirteen. And another thing,” she say, “you
still got baby ways.”

Just a minute, me nose is running. I can’t stick it this close to the crack
without it getting a dribble. Seems to steam up. Don’t worry, I ain’t going
away. There’s nobody coming to chase me away, and there ain’t likely to
be, not at this time of night. Not here.

I ain’t afraid to be in a graveyard, Sarah Graham. Not with you. I told
you I cleaned all the moss out of your name and them dates. Eighteen-
eighty is a long time ago, Sarah, but you was only twelve when it
happened so I suppose you ain’t gone on from there in a way. You never
did get to be thirteen and bloody ugly—anyway you wasn’t a boy, so it
was different for you.

It must be funny being buried. Especially if you’re fairly posh. I mean
you can’t expect to die when you’re a kid if you live in a big house an’
all. That’s why they put this big stone box thing over you, I expect, and
the railings all round. They didn’t like the idea of you being dead in the
same way as other people. Won’t happen to me. Wish it would. Me own
little stone house. I should be the same as you. I’d get behind them cracks
and listen.

I should think you was good looking, Sarah. Probably a blondie. Long
hair and all that. I bet you died of consumption like the rest of’em. But
I don’t expect you enjoyed it much. Sorry I spoke.

Me mum have black hair like her eyes and she do it different practically
every day. Boring it is. She’s always got her head over the sink, washing
it. We got a bathroom but she use the sink because she needs the space.
Then there’s wrapping it up in towels and drying it, and combing it and
looking at herself. Takes hours. And she goes on at me about being
childish.

I got a train set, Sarah. I expect you know what a train is. You went
in there a hundred years ago and I know you was only twelve but you
must have seen trains. Mine’s electric—it don’t matter what that means
because mine looks just the same as yours. Funnels and that, just like it
was still steam, because I like it. I go back and back into the past when
I run that. And that’s not all. I go little. That’s what she don’t like, me
lying on the floor and imagining I’m a right tiny little man and can climb
up them little steps over the wheels and stand on that tin platform and
feel it rocking under me feet.

“I don’t know why I ever bothered to have you,” she say. “Why don’t
you grow up?”

There ain’t no need, Sarah Graham, is there? You never bothered

Mever Grow Up 191

getting old and all that. Not that you had much choice, I expect. Me dad
didn’t either.

And he weren’t really old. Not really. Thirty-three—-just over twice
your age. I seen that on the death certificate. You got one of them
somewhere, Sarah. I ain’t. Not yet. I should like to see mine; must be
interesting. I suppose I could find yours in a museum or something and
read it to you. But there ain’t time; not now. I seen me dad’s. Cause of
death and all that. Couldn’t understand it, but I know what it was.

I got to stand up for a minute. Me legs is stiff. But if I keep saying
things I expect you’ll hear because being dead is different. It’s got to be,
or else there ain’t no point. I know you ain’t come out yet, but I reckon
you could see things out here I can’t. All this long grass and them black
trees, they’re thick with things. Things standing there, thinner than
paper. Curtains and curtains of’em. You can feel them touch as you move.

Your mum and dad might be there, except they ain’t buried here. That’s
a mystery to me, Sarah, when they spent so much money on stones for
you. I reckon that’s why I cleaned up your name, because you was by
yourself. Me dad ain’t here either. I don’t now where he is.

Christ!

Oosh, that made me jump. Bloody old owl went by like a ball of black
fluff. Couldn’t hear the old sod till he was practically on me bloody
shoulder.

Listen, Sarah, I’ll put me breath through the crack and you’ll hear. I
don’t want to say it. I don’t. I don’t.

I don’t know where me dad is. They cremated him. Rose bush, that’s
all he’s got. And his name on a sign stuck in the ground. He ain’t got a
place like you, Sarah, with moss and stuff. And he ain’t where they put
him. I can’t find him. They should’ve scattered him on the reccy; on the
football pitch. He weren’t bad in goal. A bit slow, but big. I would’ve
known where to go for him if they scattered him there. And I would’ve
kept a little pinch of him and put him in me train.

I seen his certificate but nobody know what he really died of, except
me. And her. She ought to. She done him in, Sarah. Nobody say it, but
she done it.

Him and me used to get on the floor when I had me train running. We
used to look at each other through the train wheels as it went by. We put
our ears on the carpet and you could hear it rumble like it was huge and
heavy.

We was doing it that day when she come in and seen us. I wasn’t paying
much attention to her, but I should’ve. First thing I noticed was her voice.

192 John Gordon

“Look what I married,” she say. “Bloody great kid. Playing with his
little train set.”

That begun it. I never see a row to match that one. Me dad went mad.
He jumped up and kicked me train over. Then he stamped on it. And he
yelled at her.

“I don’t give a bugger about train sets!” he said. “And I don’t give a
bugger about you!”

She didn’t say nothing. Not for a long time. She just looked at him
until all the glitter had gone out of her eyes, then she say, “I’m going
out.” She was all quiet like she had gone solid. It was only her face that
was saying the words.

I didn’t cry, Sarah. But I seen me dad cry. He was picking up me busted
train and telling me he’d get a new one. He did an’ all. Sometimes he
fling his money about like he hate the stuff. He got me a new train. Just
the same. And some new track and stuff. It was better than before, and
he should’ve loved it but he never come down on the floor with me after
that.

He sat and watched telly a lot, and she went out.

Me mum ain’t a tart, Sarah. Jeff Black say that once and he was sorry
he ever opened his mouth. I just about wiped him out. His face was one
mass of blood when I finished with him—except I didn’t finish. They
pulled me off, else he’d be dead. Like me dad. I wish it was him instead
of me dad.

Stone’s getting wet again, Sarah. Got to wipe it, and me nose. Is it nice
and dry in there? Must be, because there ain’t no cracks in the top, just
this one down the side. I bet it’s peaceful. Well it is out here, I suppose,
and the long grass is all right for lying down in. I could live here, Sarah.
Well, stay here, anyway.

What was your parents like? Don’t bother to tell me; it don’t matter.
I know what you was like with your blondie hair all spread out on the
pillow when you was dying. They was watching you and crying like mad,
I expect. And then the house all dark, and you in your coffin, and flowers.
That’s the one thing I can’t stand about funerals, the flowers. The smell
make you feel sick like it’s wrapping up the dead person as if there was
something wrong with him and they wanted to hide it.

Me dad’s funeral was pretty quick when it happened. Nobody wanted
to know about him once they’d all made their minds up what he done.
They never knew about the tablets. That never come up. Hardly likely it
would. They was her tablets.

She kept them in her handbag, didn’t she, because she always say they
was dangerous. So they was, but for a long time I never knew what was

Mever Grow Up 193

going on. He was just getting drunk every night. He was all right when
he got drunk, mostly. She used to like it because he chucked his money
about more than ever. But sometimes she go hard and say that’s why we
live where we do because we ain’t got nothing. But after they had that
row she got to letting him get drunk on his own, and then instead of
being happy down the pub he’d sit and watch the telly and when he was
really drunk he start to cry. That’s what I didn’t like. He were too big to
do that, but he done it.

I’m getting sleepy, Sarah, lying here, but I got to tell you.

I see him get the whiskey bottle out every time the front door bang
and she were gone, and he sit in the same place and I knew what were
coming. I got so used to it I used to yawn. But then I see something else.
Every time she went out, them tablets was on the telly. That little brown
bottle sat there by itself, and it should have been in her handbag.

Every morning it was gone, but every night it was there when the
whiskey bottle come out and he was on his own. I kept watching it. I
hardly dare leave the room. That little bottle were like a bomb; that were
like a little brown man squatting there, or looking like it was crawling
forward like in that story with a label round it saying “Eat me, eat me”
every time he was sorry for hisself. And that was every time he got drunk.

I watched her. I never say nothing. She always put them tablets down
on the telly like it were casual, and a couple of times I handed them back
to her, and she say, “Thank you, I better not be so careless.”

But then it kept turning up in different places, close to him, and I was
frit. I searched and searched every time she went out and when I found
it I hid it till she came home.

I felt sick, Sarah. I feel sick now. She knew what I was doing, and she
knew I couldn’t say nothing. Not to her. I couldn’t talk to me mother
about something like that, could I? She never done nothing like she was
being wicked or anything. She never let on, but that little bottle was
always there somewhere and I was getting ill looking for it.

And it was my fault, Sarah, what happened. I made a mistake. I got
so worried that what I done one night was pinch that bottle from her
handbag, and when she found out she come at me in front of him.

“You little devil,” she say. “I know what you done.” And she put out
her hand, twitching her fingers. “Give it over.”

I didn’t do nothing.

Me dad say to her, “What you on about?”

She say, “He been pinching from my handbag, that’s what.”

She held out her hand, and me dad watched. He hate people who nick
things, do my dad. He near killed me when I done something like that

194 John Gordon

once before. But I couldn’t take out that bottle, not in front of him. That
were what she wanted me to do. Draw attention to it, so he see it next
time she put it out, and next time he was drunk and crying he’d get ideas.
So you know what I done, Sarah? It were terrible.

I let myself down in front of him. I made out I was a thief. I had a quid
in me pocket and I took it out and I handed it to her. I didn’t see me dad
because I couldn’t look at him; I just stood there with the quid, holding
it out, like it was something rotten and filthy and I done it.

“See?” she say to him. “See what a nasty ugly little devil you got for a
son. What use was it ever having him when he pinch from his own
mother? It’s you what done it. Playing with him like a kid. Bloody train
sets, that’s all you’re good for. Call yourself a man? Bloody kid that’s what
you are.”

My dad’s big; he have tattoos and all that on his arms. He have a fish
that can punch a brick in two; I seen him do it. I ain’t never seen a man
get nasty with him, but she done it.

It was like her lips pushed her nose out of the way. She was all gob.
“You ain’t a man,” she say. “Never have been. I never thought you was a
proper man, never. King o’ the kids, that’s you. King o’ the bleeding
kids.”

I thought he was going to hit her then, but he never. I see his face and
it was like a kid’s just then. He have short hair, and it stuck up all bristles
like a boy who have just had a haircut. He busted my heart, Sarah, that’s
what he done. Because he didn’t even look at me. He just turned round
and walked out.

“Good riddance!” she yell, and he just went out quiet as a mouse.

I never see him again, Sarah. They wouldn’t even let me look.

She had my quid. She put it in her handbag and shut it. I didn’t care,
because she’d forgotten about them pills.

Sorry, Sarah, I just can’t help laughing. She took my quid and on top
of that she didn’t have no need of them pills no more; not for him—they
done their work and he never even seen them.

They done their work all right, and now they’re doing it again. I never
gave them back to her. She’ll never get ’em now, because that’s what I
been scrunching while I been talking to you, Sarah. But you know that,
because you been through it, and see what’s happening to me. I reckon
it’s time you come out to fetch me, Sarah, while I’m looking up at the
stars.

I still can’t help laughing. I worried all the time about them pills and

Never Grow Up 195

me dad, but he never needed them. They found him on the allotments.
In a shed. He used a bit of old rope, did my dad. He never had need of
pills.

Deadlights

Charles Wagner

Charles Wagner is one of the students who have had the good fortune
to take Dennis Etchison’s creative writingclass at U.C.L.A. Perhaps there’s
something to the idea that horror writers take delight in helping along
new horror writers—much the same as vampires are always looking out
for fresh blood.

Of himself, Wagner writes: “I was born December 8, 1957 in Beloit,
Kansas, where I lived,until finishing high school. For reasons that have
become vague, I studied electrical engineering at the University of Kansas,
receiving my degree in 1979. Quickly tiring of work in the field, I took
writing classes in my spare time, finally moving to Los Angeles in 1982
where I began writing in earnest. It was with Dennis Etchison’s help that
my work began to pay off, and it was in his class that I met my wife,
Margaret Coleman, who also writes. Presently my goal is to leave
engineering forever. ‘Deadlights’ is my first published work and I am
pleased that it was chosen to appear here—and no, the editor of this
anthology is not my uncle. ”

“Deadlights”first appeared in Twisted Tales, one of the independently
produced comic books that today continue the E.C. horror tradition.
Interestingly, the same issue also features an adaptation of Etchison’s
story, “Wet Season.” I think this is the first time that a prose version of a
story from a comic book has appeared in an anthology.

On U.S. 24 between Glasco and Beloit in Kansas, driving at night can be
hazardous. Not all the headlights that follow you on that lonely, seven¬
teen-mile stretch of road have cars connected to them.

Perhaps I should explain. Go back a few years.

It was late, around midnight. Bob, Dean, and I were heading back
home to Beloit in Bob’s Dodge Challenger. It was a fast car, so we usually
took it. Dean’s car wasn’t exactly slow, but he kept messing it up and it

197

198 Charles Wagner

was in the garage now with a carburetor problem and wouldn’t be ready
till morning.

I never teased Dean much about his Mustang because it was better
than what I had, which was nothing. Like his car. Dean himself often had
problems.

At the time, Dean’s primary problem was with Lori, his girlfriend of
the last few months. Dean was talking really big about what a bitch she
was but Bob and I knew that if he punted her, he could be in for a long
dry spell.

That night, she had punted him.

Dean sat in back on the way home, pouting. Usually I sat in back, being
the shortest of us, but tonight Dean wanted to sulk, so Bob—all 6’3” of
him—encouraged Dean to sit in the back and let me ride up front.

The whole business of Glasco was a little silly. Bob’s cousin Valery
lived there and we figured she was an ‘in’ to all the Glasco girls. Of course,
Glasco was half the size of Beloit so “all the Glasco girls” didn’t really
come to a lot.

We usually did all right, though. Especially Bob, because of his height
and looks. Tonight, however. Dean’s fight with Lori had dominated
affairs.

We were quiet. A Led Zeppelin tape dangled from the eight-track but
we were tired of it, and not feeling particularly rowdy, so we left it off.
The only sounds were the rush of air and Bob’s engine. It was warm so
we had both front windows open. Wheat fields and milo cane went by
in the dark flanking U.S. 24.

We had set a personal record after school that Friday: Running Le
Mans-style to the car and driving like hell, we made it to Glasco in eleven
minutes from the sound of the school bell. Our best time in four years of
Glasco runs. It being April of our senior year (75 was our year and the
number in our class), few opportunities remained to equal or surpass it.

Late that night, the legal limit was all the faster we felt like going.

“Shit!”

Dean was grumbling in the back seat, but Bob and I didn’t pay any
attention to him as he was probably still upset about Lori.

“Oh shit.”

This time he sounded more worried than anything else.

I looked at Bob and he sighed audibly. “What is it, Dean?” Neither of
us even glanced back at him.

“He’s back.”

“Who’s back?” I asked.

“The lights.”

Deadlights 199

A Ik

“You mean there’s a car behind us?” Bob said, trying to coax informa¬
tion out of him.

“No car—just headlights.” Dean’s voice was quiet with resolve.

Bob and I sneered at each other. I looked back.

There were a pair of headlights—bright beams—far, far behind us on

24. A month ago. Dean had told us a story about being followed by
headlights that had no car making them. It was a story a couple of others
around town had mumbled, most of those, drunk kids trying to explain
away why they were out late by switching the subject to ghostly head¬
lights. Like a lot of things Dead said, we took it with a grain of salt. (Dean
is a good guy but he has that tendency to exaggerate.)

I squinted hard and saw only headlights, which was normal for that
distance in the dark. Kansas is pretty flat and you can usually see for
miles in open country.

“Okay, there’s headlights back there,” I reported.

I shrugged at Bob and he gave a mild head-shake. Dean was hunched
into the Naugahyde, peering over the seat at the lights, as if they could
detect him at that distance.

The headlights began to gain on us.

Bob pushed in the Led Zeppelin tape. “Communication Breakdown”
poured out of the speakers. I flinched and lowered the volume on the
tape deck.

“Look,” Dean said. He was frozen in position, staring out the back
window.

The headlights were really coming on now. Still on bright beam, they
glanced off the rear view mirror into Bob’s eyes.

“I wish he’d dim those things,” Bob muttered.

“He never does,” Dean placidly said.

“Is the driver a he?” I asked.

Dean shrugged. “There isn’t any driver that you can see, I just say that.”

By now, the headlights had drawn very near, making the cabin of Bob’s
Challenger almost as bright as day. Dean seemed to be trying to merge
with the car seat. Bob motioned outside the window with his hand,
waving the car past, but the lights stayed glued to our fender. I couldn’t
see any car, but then, the light was awfully bright.

The car, or whatever it was, didn’t pass us. I began making half-peace-
sign gestures at the lights with my hand. Bob maintained his speed,
muttering “asshole” under his breath. “—communication breakdown, it’s
always the saaammmeeee—” rattled the speakers.

“Another minute ...” Dean said.

200 Charles Wagner

My eyes adjusted to the glare a little bit and I still couldn’t see a car.
The old highway 41 turnoff drew near.

“About now ...” Dean said, his voice softly patient.

The headlights eased off our tail, slowing to a near halt. They made
the turn onto old 41.1 tried to see what kind of car was behind them but
my eyes were adjusted to light too much to permit me to see anything
other than the headlights swerving and Dean looking at me for some
kind of confirmation.

“Well?” he asked.

“I’m not sure,” was all I could say.

“I was busy driving,” Bob said, pulling the tape out and sounding as
apologetic as he could.

When we dropped Dean off at his house, he was still pissed at us.

Bob came over to my place that Saturday for a game of horse. We
always played horse or one-on-one, but I preferred horse since I was short
and had never won at the other. We were shooting the ball well that day
with our shirts off and hanging from the trellis that marked the court’s
east boundary. Winter-pale, we were hoping to start our tans. The score
was “ho” to “ho.”

Dean’s car swung into the drive and pulled up to the west side of the
court. Dean stepped out with flourish, the perennial Banner Drive-Inn
glass of Coke in his hand. (I swear, the guy drank more pop than a
little-league team.) We expected him to whip off his shirt and join the
game.

Instead, he sauntered coolly over to the trellis and sucked on his Coke.
“Guess what I heard,” he said, staring into the cup.

I held the ball to my hip and waited.

“Well?” Bob said.

Dean pulled off the lid and stirred the ice with his straw. “Sumthin
about those headlights ....”

“Yeah,” I said. “Whad’ya hear?”

Dean cocked the cup to his mouth and tapped some ice in. “Some guy
got killed in a wreck twenty years ago,” he said, his words slurpy with
ice, “out by the old 41 turnoff. My dad told me about it.”

I won’t repeat Dean’s version of the tale. Since that Saturday, I’ve
studied the incident and what follows is my version of what the papers
reported:

There was a guy named Bill Phillips. His friends had called him “Tank”
because he was built like a fire-plug, was strong, and had played fullback
in school. He was a mechanic and a 1953 BHS grad. He had been driving

Deadlights 201

back from Glasco in a big hurry and apparently tried to turn on to old
41. He was going too fast and rolled his Merc. His neck was broken. That
was in May of 1955.

That was all the papers told me, but I did some talking around and
learned more. It was Bob’s aunt—Valery’s mom—that gave me most of
the real story behind that odd wreck.

She said that Tank had been dating her best friend, Becky Hunter.
Both girls lived in Glasco, so Tank did a lot of commuting between Beloit
and Glasco, much as we did. Tank had been dating Becky for four years
and he was working up to a proposal that Becky probably would’ve
rejected, or so Bob’s aunt believed.

She said Becky liked Tank all right, but she really wanted to go on to
college and get a degree. Usually when a girl leaves Glasco—or Beloit,
for that matter—for college, she meets a lot of new people. Most never
come back, except for visits. And Tank was the kind of guy who wanted
to settle down in Beloit.

Well anyway. Tank never got a chance to propose. He went to Glasco
that May evening to see Becky but Bob’s aunt told him she had already
gone out. Hopping mad, Tank tore off in his Merc, hoping, probably, to
overtake Becky and her date. Since Glasco didn’t have a movie house, he
figured they’d head for Beloit.

When Bob’s aunt reached this part, it was pretty obvious to guess the
rest. Driving hard at night, Tank undoubtedly wanted to get to Beloit
before the show let out so he could catch the new guy and Becky before
they got to their car. But when he got near the old 41 turnoff, another
thought probably occurred to him.

Even in 1955, 41 was a vintage strip of road. Made in the ’20s, it was
a narrow piece of old, cracked concrete that ran north-south for thirty
miles. It wasn’t very well traveled but its shallow ditches made for
excellent parking.

. The thought that maybe, just maybe, Becky and this new guy were
parking on old 41 got to Tank so hard, he didn’t know which way to go.
So he ended up going nowhere.

If you believe in ghosts, it’s not hard to imagine Tank’s ghost tearing
up U.S. 24 looking for Becky. He’d keep his brights on so he could peer
inside cars to see if Becky was there. Then he’d complete the turn onto
old 41.

That’s a pretty stupid notion. «

Not many folks claim to have seen ghostly headlights on 24, and if
they were for real, there wasn’t much they could do to a person. Besides,

202 Charles Wagner

Becky Hunter Collins moved to New York back in 1960 and Bob’s aunt
assured me that it wasn’t fear of headlights that made the move so
attractive to her.

But in 1975, the newspaper story was all Bob, Dean, and I knew about
the whole affair. Bob and I remained convinced that Dean was exagger¬
ating about the “mysterious” headlights, but we were intrigued nonethe¬
less.

That Saturday evening, the three of us cruised Mill Street in Bob’s
Dodge before making the inevitable trip to Glasco. We had dates, except
for Dean, but the prospect of encountering the lights again was stronger
than any dim hope of sex.

We reached Glasco at sundown. Val joined us to keep Dean company.

The night was uneventful. We parked in a cemetery, hoping for some
necking, but the girls weren’t very scare-prone and easily avoided our
attempts at “comfort.” Disgusted, we took them home and left Glasco,
but not before several hours had passed and four six-packs were downed.

On the way back, I was in my customary place in the back seat.
Bachman-Turner Overdrive was singing at us to “stay awake all night”
over the eight-track and the windows were down. Lounging drunkenly,
I glanced out the back.

There were headlights to the rear.

I watched for half a mile until the headlights became a red pickup that
took the first farm turnoff. I sat back and watched Beloit twinkle in the
west.

“—stay awake, stay awake—” the tape deck throbbed.

Sitting in the back reminded me of the times I sat in the back of Dad’s
big Chrysler when we were coming back from trips to Topeka to see my
uncle. I’d stretch out in the back but wouldn’t sleep.

I never sleep in cars.

Peering out the window, I’d gaze as far as I could see over the land.
On the horizon, sometimes, thunderheads would stand, lit like pink
cauliflower by lightning.

Other times, it would appear that there were large, vague objects
trundling along—like nebulous tumbleweeds or something—trying to
keep pace with our car. They would move just outside the edge of sight,
rolling and lurching along, but finally fall far behind. Others would be
there to take up the chase until we got near town and the lights drove
them away.

I knew they were illusions, like water on the road on a sunny day, but
it was neat to imagine them chasing us.

Fortunately, we never had a flat or engine trouble.

Deadlights 203

Over the years, things didn’t change all that much. When I got my
restricted license, I began dreaming of a car of my own... but I remained
stuck in back seats.

While reminiscing, I looked out the Challenger’s side window into the
darkness. I saw nothing strange—a farm light and a thunderhead far in
the north. Lightning flashed inside the cloud. The color was blue like
brains.

Light flashed suddenly in the compartment. I looked back to see two
headlights on hi-beam coming over a low rise a mile back. They were
gaining on us—fast.

Bachman-Tumer switched songs. “Let it Ride” blared over the speak¬
ers.

I closed my eyes, trying to keep the pupils opened wide, and looked
again.

There was no car visible behind the lights. Brightness became glare
inside our car.

“Bob, Dean—he’s here.” Dean looked back as Bob stayed fixed to the
road.

“Shit, it’s him,” Dean said. The headlights came right behind us like
the night before. “—wouldja let it ride?” the tape deck asked.

“I don’t see a car, fellas,” I dutifully reported.

“Fuck him!” Bob growled, stomping on the pedal. The Challenger
roared and hit 70.

The headlights didn’t fade an inch.

“I can’t hear an engine on that thing!” I shouted, not really sure that
I could’ve heard anything at all outside the car.

The headlights stayed mutely on our tail at 85 mph.

“C’mon, Bob!” Dean pleaded. “Why bother?”

“It’s been a shit-night and I wanna lose this ghost!”

“What!?” I yelled as we went over 90. “—would you say good-bye,
wouldja let it ride—” Randy Bachman shrieked over the speakers.

“May as well try!!” Bob shouted, letting it all out on the floorboards.
The car roared up to 100 mph.

The headlights didn’t waver. It was high-noon bright inside the
Challenger.

The 41 turnoff loomed ahead.

“I’ll take the turn and he’ll follow!” Bob yelled.

“No!!” Dean wailed. He reached for the wheel. Bob turned to slap his
hand away. “—ride, ride, ride, let it ride—” chanted the tape deck. I
grabbed an armrest and dropped to the floor.

We skipped off the road and jumped the ditch at 90 mph. The

204 Charles Wagner

Challenger bucked hard into the cultivated earth and the tires blew out.
Dirty milo cane churned into the car as I buffeted fetally on the floor, my
arm cracking against the back seat as we ground to a dead halt in the
milo field. Our headlights faintly lit the dead, brown stalks all around
us. The tape had broken and FM hiss played softly in the car.

In the front seat. Bob and Dean remained, their heads imbedded in
the dashboard.

Painfully, I turned my head and looked out, back through the swath
we had made, and saw the headlights in the road. They had stopped, as
if to allow their invisible driver to view the accident, and then started
moving slowly forward. I watched them pass by, but they didn’t turn on
to old highway 41.

They just switched off.

There isn’t much more to tell.

It’s been four years since the wreck, and since then, I’ve gotten my
college diploma and a car of my own. In a few weeks. I’ll be moving to
Wichita to start a new job, but for now, it feels good sitting comfy in
Beloit.

I reckon while I’m here visiting the folks, I’ll stop by Bob and Dean’s
graves and leave them some flowers. That might make them feel a little
better.

Lately, the talk around town is that the headlights that follow you from
Glasco are back. The few that have seen them say they’re different: four
beams now, instead of two. Like the hi-beams of a Dodge. I know the
rumor is true because I’ve seen the headlights myself.

Come to think of it. I’d better put flowers on my friends’ graves.

Last night, coming into town, they tried to run me off the road.

Talking in the Dark

Dennis Etchison

In the case of the frequent contributors to The Year’s Best Horror
Stories, it sometimes becomes a strain to write something new about them
with each new introduction. Looking back over my own and previous
editor Gerald W. Page’s introductions to stories by Dennis Etchison, I note
one pleasant change over the years: It is no longer accurate to describe
Dennis Etchison as “unknown and unjustly neglected. ”It took a few years,
but Etchison has now firmly established himself as one of the horror
genre’s premier authors.

Born in Stockton, California on March 30, 1943, Etchison now lives
in Los Angeles, where he teaches creative writing at U.C.L.A. Most
recently, he has been hired as story editor for “The Hitchhiker” hor¬
ror/fantasy series on HBO. Etchison’s books include film novelizations of
The Fog, Halloween II, Halloween III, and Videodrome (the last three
under the pseudonym Jack Martin); two short story collections, The Dark
Country and Red Dreams, and a novel, Darkside. “Talking in the Dark”
was first published in Charles L. Grant’s Shadows 7. Any resemblance to
actual horror fans or horror writers is unimaginable.

In the damp bedroom Victor Ripon sat hunched over his desk, making
last-minute corrections on the ninth or tenth draft, he couldn’t remember
which, of a letter to the one person in the world who might be able to
help. Outside, puppies with the voices of children struggled against their
leashes for a chance to be let in from the cold. He ignored them and bore
down. Their efforts at sympathy were wasted on him; he had nothing
more to give. After thirty-three years he had finally stepped out of the
melodrama.

He clicked the pen against his teeth. Since the letter was to a man he

» ■

had never met, he had to be certain that his words would not seem naive
or foolish.

“Dear Sir,” he reread, squinting down at the latest version’s cramped.

205

206 Dennis Etchison

meticulously cursive backhand. He lifted the three-hole notebook paper
by the edges so as not to risk smearing the ballpoint ink. “Dear Sir... ”

First let me say that I sincerely hope this letter reaches you. I do not
have your home address so I have taken the liberty of writing in care of
your publisher. If they forward it to you please let me know.

I am not in the habit of writing to authors. This is the first time. So
please bear with me if my letter is not perfect in spelling, etc.

I have been reading your Works for approximately 6 yrs., in other
words since shortly after I was married but more about that later. Mr.
Christian, Rex if I may call you that and I feel I can, you are my favorite
author and greatest fan. Some people say you are too morbid and
depressing but I disagree. You do not write for children or women with
weak hearts (I am guessing) but in your books people always get what
they deserve. No other author I have read teaches this so well. I can see
why you are one of the most popular authors in the world. I have all 6
of your books, I hope there are only 6,1 wouldn’t like to think I missed
any! (If so could you send me a list of the titles and where I might obtain
them? A S.A.S.E is enclosed for your convenience. Thank you.)

My favorite is THE SILVERING, I found that to be a very excellent plot,
to tell the truth it scared the shit out of me if you know what I mean and
I think you do, right? (Wink wink.) MOON OVER THE NEST is right up
there, too. My wife introduced me to your novels, my ex-wife I should
say and I guess I should thank her for that much. She left me 2 1/2 yrs.
ago, took the kids to San Diego first and then to Salt Lake City I found
out later. I don’t know why, she didn’t say. I have tried to track her down
but no luck. Twice with my late parents’ help I found out where she was
staying but too late. So that is the way she wants it, I guess. I miss the
kids though, my little boy especially.

In your next book, THE EDGE, I noticed you made one small mistake,
I hope you don’t mind my pointing it out. In that one you have Moreham
killing his old girlfriend by electrocution (before he does other things to
her!) while she is setting up their word processor link. Excuse me but
this is wrong. I know this because I was employed in the Computer Field
after dropping out of Pre-Med to support my family. The current utilized
by a Mark IIIA terminal is not enough to produce a lethal shock, even if
the interface circuits were wired in sequence as you describe (which is
impossible anyway, sorry, just thought you might like to know). Also the
.066 nanosecond figure should be corrected ....

And so on in a similar vein. Victor worked his way through three more

Talking in the Dark 207

densely packed pages of commentary and helpful advice regarding Rex
Christian’s other bestsellers, including Jesus Had A Son, The Masked
Moon, and the collection of short stories. Nightmare Territory, before
returning to more personal matters.

If you ever find yourself in my neck of the woods please feel free to
drop by. We could have a few beers and sit up talking about the many
things we have in common. Like our love of old movies. I can tell you
feel the same way about such “classics” (?) as ROBOT INVADERS, MARS
VS. EARTH and HOUSE OF BLOOD from the way you wrote about them
in your series of articles for TV GUIDE. I subscribed so I wouldn’t miss a
single installment. There are others we could talk about, even watch if
we’re lucky. I get Channel 56 here in Gezira, you may have heard about
it, they show old chestnuts of that persuasion all night long!!

If you have not guessed by now, I too try my hand at writing
occasionally myself. I have been working for the past 11/2 yrs. on a story
entitled PLEASE, PLEASE, SORRY, THANK YOU. It will be a very impor¬
tant story, I believe. Don’t worry. I’m not going to ask you to read it. (You
are probably too busy, anyway.) Besides, I read WRITER’S DIGEST so I
know where to send it if and when I succeed in bringing it to a satisfactory
stage of completion. But you are my inspiration. Without you I would
not have the courage to go on with it at all.

He hesitated before the conclusion, as he had when first drafting it
four nights ago. On the other side of the window pane the sky was already
smoking over with a fine mist, turning rapidly from the color of arterial
blood to a dead slate gray. The sea rushed and drubbed at the coastline
a mile to the west, shaking and steadily eroding the bedrock upon which
his town was built; the vibrations which reached the glass membrane
next to him were like the rhythms of a buried human heart.

There is one more thing. I have a very important question to ask you,
I hope you don’t mind. It is a simple thing (to you) and I’m sure you could
answer it. You might say I should ask someone else but the truth is I don’t
know anyone else who could help. What I know isn’t enough. I thought
it would be but it isn’t. It seems to me that the things we learned up until
now, the really important things, and I can tell we’ve had many of the
same experiences (the Sixties, etc.), when it came time to live them, the
system balked. And we’re dying. But don’t worry. I’m a fighter. I learned
a long time ago: never give up.

I live in my parents’ old house now, so we could have plenty of privacy.

208 Dennis Etchison

In my opinion we could help each other very much. My number is
474-2841. If I’m not here I’ll be at the Blue & White (comer of Rosetta
and Damietta), that is where I work, anybody can tell you where to find
it. I hope to hear from you at your earliest convenience.

Meanwhile I’m waiting with bated breath for your book of essays,
OTHER CEDENTS, they mentioned it on Wake Up, America and I can
hardly wait! If you care to let me read the manuscript prior to publication
I promise to return it by Express Mail in perfect condition. (Just asking,
hint hint.) In any event please come by for a visit on your next trip to the
West Coast. I hope you will take me up on it sometime (soon!), I really
need the answer. We Horror Fans have to stick together. As you said in
your Introduction to NIGHTMARE TERRITORY, “It may be a long time
till morning, but there’s no law against talking in the dark.”

Faithfully Yours,

Victor Ripon

He sat back. He breathed in, out. It was the first breath he had been
aware of taking for several minutes. The view from the window was no
longer clear. A blanket of fog had descended to shroud all evidence of
life outside his room. The puppies next door had quieted, resigned to
their fate. Still, a hopeful smile played at the comers of his mouth. He
stacked and folded the pages to fit the already stamped envelope. There.
Now there wasn’t anything to do but wait.

He stretched expansively, hearing his joints pop like dry bones, and
his fingernails touched the window. So early, and yet the glass was
chillingly brittle, ready to shatter under the slightest provocation.

With any luck he wouldn’t have long to wait at all.

The days shrank as the season contracted, drawing inward against the
approaching winter. Trees bared stiffening limbs, scraped the sky and
etched patterns of stars as sharp and cold as diamond dust above the
horizon. Victor got out his old Armyjacket. The main house became dank
and tomblike, magnifying the creaking of dry-rotted timbers. He took to
sleeping in the guest cabin, though the portable heater kept him tight
and shivering night after night.

He pressed bravely ahead with his story, the outlines and preliminary
versions of which by now filled two thick notebooks, reorganizing,
redrafting, and obsessively repolishing lines and paragraphs with a
jeweler’s precision.

But it was not good enough.

He wanted the pages to sing with ideas that had once seemed so

Talking in the Dark 209

important to him, all and everything he knew, and yet they did not, and
no amount of diligence was able to bring them to life. The story came to
be a burden and weighed more heavily in his hands each time he lifted
it out of the drawer. After a few weeks he was reluctant to open the desk
at all.

He stayed in bed more but slept less, dragging himself up for work
each day only at the last possible minute. Nothing except Rex Christian’s
books held any interest for him now, and he had read them all so many
times he believed he knew them by heart, almost as well as his own
stillborn effort. Channel 56 exhausted its library of late-night movies and
sold out to a fundamentalist religious sect peddling fire and brimstone.
The nights lengthened and the long winter closed around him.

Each day, he thought, I die a little. I must. I get out of bed, don’t I?

Mornings, he walked the two miles along the creek into town, reex¬
amining the last few years like beads to be memorized in his pocketed
fists before they slipped away forever. He walked faster, but his life only
seemed to recede that much more swiftly across the dunes and back to
the sea. He could neither hold on to nor completely forget how things
had once been. Whether or not they had ever truly been the way he
remembered them was not the point. The spell of the past, his past, real
or imagined, had settled over him like the shadow of giant wings, and
he could not escape.

He submerged himself in his work at the shop, a space he rented for
small appliance repair behind the Blue & White Diner, but that was not
enough, either. For a time he tried to tell himself that nothing else
mattered. But it was an evasion. You can run, he thought, but you can’t
hide. Rex Christian had taught him that.

Some days he would have traded anything he owned and all that he
had ever earned to wake up one more time with the special smell of her
on his pillow—just that, no matter whether he ever actually set eyes on
her again. Other days his old revenge fantasies got the better of him. But
all that was real for him now was the numbness of more and more hours
at the shop, struggling to penetrate the inner workings of what others
paid him to fix, the broken remnants of households which had fallen
apart suddenly, without warning or explanation.

When not busy at work, the smallest of rewards kept him going. The
weekly changes of program at the local movie theater, diverting but
instantly forgettable; the specialties of the house at the Blue & White,
prepared for him by the new waitress, whose name turned out to be
Jolene; and Jolene herself when business was slow and there was
nowhere else to go. She catered to him without complaint, serving

210 Dennis Etchison

something, perhaps, behind his eyes that he thought he had put to rest
long ago. He was grateful to her for being there. But he could not repay
her in kind. He did not feel it, could not even if he had wanted to.

By late December he had almost given up hope.

The weekends were the worst. He had to get out, buttoned against the
cold, though the coffee in town was never hot enough and the talk after
the movies was mindless and did not nourish. But he could bear the big
house no longer, and even the guest cabin had begun to enclose him like
a vault.

This Saturday night, the last week before Christmas, the going was
painfully slow. Steam expanded from his mouth like ectoplasm. He
turned up his collar against an icy offshore wind. There were sand devils
in the road, a halo around the ghost of a moon which hung over his
shoulder and paced him relentlessly. At his side, to the north, dark reeds
rustled and scratched the old riverbank with a sound of rusted blades.
He stuffed his hands deeper into his jacket and trudged on toward the
impersonal glow of the business district.

The neon above the Blue & White burned coolly in the darkness.

The nightlife in Gezira, such as it was—Siamese silhouettes of couples
cruising for burgers, clutches of frantic teenagers on their way to or from
the mall—appeared undiscouraged by the old. If anything, the pedestri¬
ans scissoring by seemed less inhibited than ever, pumping reserves of
adrenaline and huffing wraiths of steam as if their last-minute shopping
mattered more than anything else in this world. The bubble machine
atop a police car revolved like a deranged Christmas tree light. Children
giggled obscenities and fled as a firecracker resounded between lamp-
posts; it might have been a gunshot. The patrol car spun out, burning
rubber, and screeched past in the wrong direction.

He took a breath, opened the door to the diner and ducked inside.

The interior was clean and bright as a hospital cafeteria. A solitary
pensioner dawdled at the end of the counter, spilling coffee as he cradled
a cup in both hands. Twin milkshake glasses, both empty, balanced near
the edge. As Victor entered, jangling the bell, the waitress glanced up.
She saw him and beamed.

“Hi!”

“Hi, yourself.”

“I’ll be a few more minutes. Do you mind? The night girl just called.
She’s gonna be late.” Jolene watched him as she cleaned off the tables,
trying to read his face as if it were the first page of a test. Her eyes flicked
nervously between his.

Talking in the Dark 211

“Take your time,” he said. He drew off his gloves and shuffled up to
the counter. “No hurry.”

“The movie—?”

“We won’t miss anything.”

She blinked at him. “But I thought the last show—”

“It starts,” he said, “when we get there.”

“Oh.” She finished the tables, clearing away the remains of what other
people could not finish. “I see,” she said. “Are—are you all right?”

“Yes.”

“Well, you don’t sound like it.” She looked at him as if she wanted to
smooth his hair, take his temperature, enfold him in her big arms and
stroke his head. Instead, she wiped her hands and tilted her face
quizzically, keeping her distance. “How about something to eat?”

“Just coffee,” he said. “My stomach’s...” He sought the precise word;
it eluded him. He gave up. “It’s not right.”

“Again?”

“Again.” He tried a smile. It came out wrong. “Sorry. Maybe next time.”

She considered the plate which she had been keeping warm on the
grill. It contained a huge portion of fried shrimp, his favorite. She sighed.

The door jingled and a tall man came in. He was dressed like a logger
or survivalist from up north, with plaid shirt, hiking boots, full beard,
and long hair. Victor decided he had never seen him before, though
something about the man was vaguely familiar.

Jolene dealt out another setup of flatware. He didn’t need a menu. He
knew what he wanted.

Victor considered the man, remembering the sixties. That could be
me, he thought; I could have gone that way, too, if I had had the courage.
And look at him. He’s better off. He doesn’t have any attachments to
shake. He opted out a long time ago, and now there’s nothing to pull him
down.

Jolene set the man’s order to cooking and returned to Victor.

“It won’t be long,” she said. “I promise.” She gestured at the old Zenith
portable next to the cash register. “You want the TV on?”

She needed to do something for him, Victor realized. She needed to.
“Sure,” he said agreeably. “Why not?”

She flicked a knob.

The nightly episode of a new religious game show. “You Think That’s
Heavy?” was in progress. In each segment a downtrodden soul from the
audience was brought onstage and led up a ramp through a series of
possible solutions, including a mock employment bureau, a bank loan
office, a dating service, a psychiatric clinic and, finally, when all else had

212 Dennis Etchlson

failed, a preacher with shiny cheeks and an unnatural preoccupation with
hair. Invariably, this last station of the journey was the one that took.
Just now a poor woman with three children and a husband who could
not support them was sobbing her way to the top of the hill.

I hope to God she finds what she needs, Victor thought absently. She
looks like she deserves it. Of course, you can’t tell. They’re awfully good
at getting sympathy....

But someone will come down and set things right for her, sooner or
later. She’ll get what she deserves, and it will be right as rain. I believe
that.

But what about the kids? They’re the ones I’m worried about....

At that moment the door to the diner rang open and several small
children charged in, fresh from a spree on the mall, clutching a few cheap
toys and a bag of McDonald’s french fries. They spotted the big man in
the red plaid shirt and ran to him, all stumbles and hugs. The man winked
at Jolene, shrugged, and relocated to a comer booth.

“Whatdaya gonna do?” he said helplessly. “I reckon I gotta feed ’em,
right?”

“I’ll get the children’s menus,” said Jolene.

“You got any chili dogs?” said the man. “We came a long way. Don’t
have a whole lot left to spend. Is that okay?”

“Give them the shrimp,” suggested Victor. “I can’t handle it.”

Jolene winked back. “I think we can come up with something,” she
said.

The pensioner observed the children warily. Who could say what they
might have brought in with them? He obviously did not want to find out.
His hands shook, spilling more coffee. It ran between his fingers as if his
palms had begun to bleed.

Well, thought Victor, maybe I was wrong. Look at the big guy now.
He can’t run away from it either. But it could be he doesn’t want to. He’s
got them, and they’ll stick by him no matter what. Lucky, I guess. What’s
his secret?

Out on the sidewalk passersby hurried on their way, a look of expec¬
tation and dread glazing their eyes. Victor picked up his coffee. It was
almost hot enough to taste.

There was another burst of ringing.

He braced himself, not knowing what to expect. He scanned the
doorway.

But this time it was not a customer. It was the telephone.

Jolene reached across the counter, pushing dirty dishes out of the way.
One of the milkshake glasses teetered and smashed to the floor. At the

Talking in the Dark 213

end of the counter, the pensioner jumped as though the spirit of Christ¬
mas past had just lain its withered fingers to the back of his neck.

“What?” Jolene balanced the receiver. “I’m sorry, there’s so much—
yes. I said yes. Hold on.” She passed the phone to Victor. “It’s for you,”
she said.

“It is?”

“Sure is,” she said. “I can’t tell if it’s a—”

“Yes?”

‘Victor?”

“Yeah?”

‘Vic!” said the reedy voice on the line. “Great to get ahold of you,
finally! This is Rex. Rex Christian!”

“Really?” said Victor, stunned.

“Yup. Look, I’ll be passing through your town in about, oh, say an hour.
I was just wondering. Are you free tonight, by any chance?”

“Uh, sure, Re—”

“Don’t say my name!”

“Okay,” said Victor. '

“I’m on my way from a meeting in San Francisco. Traveling incognito,
you might say. You don’t know how people can be if the word gets out.
So I’d appreciate it if, you know, you don’t let on who you’re talking to.
Understand?”

“I understand.” It must be hard, he thought, being a celebrity.

“I knew you would.”

Victor cupped his hand around the mouthpiece. The old man from the
end of the counter fumbled money from his coin purse and staggered
out. Victor tried to say the right things. He wasn’t ready. However, he
remembered how to get to his own house. He gave directions from
Highway 1, speaking as clearly and calmly as he could.

“Who was that?” asked Jolene when he had hung up.

“Nobody,” said Victor.

“What?”

“A friend, I mean. He ... ”

“He what?”

“I’ve got to ... meet him. I forgot.”

Her expression, held together until now by nervous anticipation,
wilted before his eyes. The tension left her; her posture sagged. Sud¬
denly, she looked older, overweight, lumpen. He did not know what to
say.

He grabbed his gloves and made ready to leave.

She smoothed her apron, head down, hiding a tic, and then made a

214 Dennis Etchlson

great effort to face him. The smile was right but the lines were deeper
than ever before.

“Call me?” she said. “If you want to. It’s up to you. I don’t care.”

“Jolene ...”

“No, really! I couldn’t take the cold tonight, anyway. I—I hope you
have a nice meeting. I can tell it’s important.”

“Business,” he said. “You know.”

“I know.”

“I’m sorry.”

She forced a laugh. “What on earth for? Don’t you worry.”

He nodded, embarrassed.

“Take care of yourself,” she said.

You deserve better, he thought, than me, Jolene.

“You, too,” he said. “I didn’t plan it this way. Please believe—”

“I believe you. Now get going or you’ll be late.”

He felt relieved. He felt awful. He felt woefully unprepared. But at
least he felt something.

All the way home the hidden river ran at his side, muffled by the reeds
but no longer distant. This time he noticed that there were secret voices
in the waters, talking to themselves and to each other, to the night with
the tongues of wild children on their way back to the sea.

Now he considered the possibility that they might be talking to him.

Victor unlocked the old house and fired up the heater. He had little
chance to clean. By the time he heard the car, he was covered with a cold
sweat, and his stomach, which he had neglected to feed, constricted in
a hopeless panic.

He parted the bathroom curtains.

The car below was long and sleek. A limousine? No, but it was a
late-model sedan, a full-size Detroit tank with foglights.

A man climbed out, lugging a briefcase, and made for the front of the
house.

Victor ran downstairs and flung open the door.

He saw a child approaching in the moonlight. It was the same person
he had seen leave the shadow of the car. From the upstairs window the
figure had appeared deceptively foreshortened.

The boy came into the circle of the porch light, sticking his chin out
and grinning rows of pearly teeth.

‘Vic?”

Victor was confused.

Then he saw.

Talking in the Dark 215

It was not a child, after all.

“I’m Rex Christian,” said the dwarf, extending a stubby hand. “Glad
to meet you!”

The hand felt cold and compressed as a rubber ball in Victor’s grip. He
released it with an involuntary shudder. He cleared his throat.

“Come on in. I—I’ve been expecting you.”

The visitor wobbled to an overstuffed chair and bounced up onto the
cushion. His round-toed shoes jutted out in front of him.

“So! This is where one of my biggest fans lives!”

“I guess so,” said Victor. “This is it.”

“Great! It’s perfect!”

On the stained wall a grandfather clock sliced at the thick air.

“Can I get your something?” Victor’s own voice sounded hollow in his
ears. “Like something to drink?”

“I’d settle for a beer. Just one, though. I want to keep a clear head.”

Beer, thought Victor. Let me see .... He couldn’t think. He looked
away. The small face and the monkey mouth were too much for him. He
wanted to laugh and cty at the same time.

“You owe me, remember?”

“What?”

“The beer. In your letter you said—”

“Oh. Oh, yeah. Just a minute.”

Victor went to the kitchen. By the time he returned, he had replayed
his visitor’s words in his mind until he recognized the rhythm. Everything
the dwarf—midget, whatever he was—had said so far fit the style. There
was no doubt about it. For better or worse, the person in the other room
was in fact Rex Christian. The enormity of the occasion finally hit him.
Setting the bottles on the coffee table between them, he almost knocked
one over.

My time has come, he thought. My problems are about to be over. My
prayers have been answered.

“This must be pretty far out of the way for you,” Victor said.

“Not at all! Thanks for the invitation.”

“Yeah,” said Victor. “I mean, no. I mean ...”

And in that instant he saw himself, this house, his life as it really was
for the first time. He was overwhelmed with self-consciousness and
shame.

“Did . .. did you have any trouble finding the place?”

“Nope. Followed your directions. Perfect!”

Victor studied the virgules in the carpet, trying to find his next words
there.

216 Dennis Etchison

Rex Christian leaned forward in his chair. The effort nearly doubled
him over.

“Look, I know what it’s like for you.”

“You do?”

“Believe me, I do. That’s my business, isn’t it? I’ve seen it all before.”

Rex sat back and took a long pull from the tall bottle. His Adam’s apple
rolled like a ball bearing in his throat.

“You must know a lot about people,” said Victor.

“Never enough. That’s why I take a trip like this at least once a year.”
He chortled. “I rent a car, visit folks like you all over the country. It’s a
way of paying them back. Plus it helps me with my research.”

“I see.” There was an awkward pause. “You—you said you were in San
Francisco. On business. Was that part of this year’s trip?”

“Right. Nothing beats the old one-on-one, does it?”

So he didn’t come all this way just to see me, thought Victor. There
were others. “From your writing, well, I thought you’d be a very private
person.”

“I am! Somebody wants a book, they have to climb the mountain. But
when it comes to my fans, it’s a different story. They’re raw material. I
go to the source, know what I mean?”

“I used to be a people-person,” said Victor, loosening up a bit. He
drained his bottle. He thought of going for two more. But the writer had
hardly touched his. “Now, well, I don’t go out much. I guess you could
say I’ve turned into more of a project-type person.”

“Glad to hear it!”

“You are?”

“It just so happens I’ve got a project you might be interested in. A new
book. It’s called A Long Time Till Morning.”

“I like the title,” said Victor. “Excuse me.”

He rose unsteadily and made a beeline for the stairs. The beer had
gone through his system in record time. When he came out of the
bathroom, he gazed down in wonderment from the top of the landing.
Rex Christian was still sitting there, stiff and proper as a ventriloquist’s
dummy. I can’t believe this is happening, he thought. Now everything’s
changed. There he is, sitting in my living room!

His heart pounded with exhilaration.

Let me never forget this. Every minute, every second, every detail. I
don’t want to miss a thing. This is important; this matters. The most
important night of my life.

He bounded down the stairs and snagged two more beers and an
opener from the kitchen, then reseated himself on the sofa.

Talking in the Dark 217

Rex Christian greeted him with a sparkling grin.

“Tell me about your new book,” said Victor breathlessly. “I want to
hear everything. I guess I’ll be the first, won’t I?”

“One of the first.” The author folded his tiny hands. “It’s about an
epidemic that’s sweeping the country—I don’t have the details yet. I’m
still roughing it out. All I gave my editor was a two-page outline.”

“And he bought it?”

Rex Christian grinned.

“What kind of epidemic?”

“That’s where you can help, Vic.”

“If it’s research you want, well, just tell me what you need. I used to
do a lot of that in school. I was in premed and—”

“I want to make this as easy as possible for you.”

“I know. I mean. I’m sure you do. But it’s no sweat. I’ll collect the data.
Xerox articles, send you copes of everything that’s ever been written on
the subject, as soon as you tell me....”

Rex Christian frowned, his face wrinkling like a deflating balloon. “I’m
afraid that would involve too many legalities. Copyrights, fees, that sort
of thing. Sources that might be traced.”

“We could get permission, couldn’t we? You wouldn’t have to pay me.
It would be an honor to—”

“I know.” Rex Christian’s miniature fingers flexed impatiently. “But
that’s the long way around, my friend.”

“However you want to do it. Say the word and I’ll get started, first
thing in the morning. Monday morning. Tomorrow’s Sunday and—”

“Monday’s too late. It starts now. In fact, it’s already started. You didn’t
know that, did you?” Rex’s face flushed eagerly, his cheeks red as a
newborn infant’s. “I want to know your feelings on the subject. All of
them.” He pumped his legs and crept forward on the cushion. “Open
yourself up. It won’t hurt. I promise.”

Victor’s eyes stung and his throat ached. It starts here, he thought,
awestruck. The last thirty-three years were the introduction to my life.
Now it really starts.

‘You wouldn’t want to know my feelings,” he said. “They—I’ve been
pretty mixed up. For a long time.”

“I don’t care about what you felt before. I want to know what you feel
tonight. It’s only you, Vic. You’re perfect. I can’t get that in any library.
Do you know how valuable you are to me?”

“But why? Your characters, they’re so much more real, more alive....”

Rex waved his words aside. “An illusion. Art isn’t life, you know. If it
were, the world would to up in flames. It’s artifice. By definition.” He slid

218 Dennis Etchison

closer, his toes finally dropping below the coffee table. “Though naturally
I try to make it echo real life as closely as I can. That’s what turns my
readers on. That’s part of my mission. Don’t you understand?”

Victor’s eyes filled with tears.

Other people, the people he saw and heard on the screen, on TV, in
books and magazines, voices on the telephone, all had lives which were
so much more vital than his own wretched existence. The closest he had
ever come to peak experiences, the moments he found himself returning
to again and again in his memory, added up to nothing more significant
than chance meetings on the road, like the time he hitchhiked to San
Francisco in the summer of ’67, a party in college where no one knew
his name, the face of a girl in the window of a passing bus that he had
never been able to forget.

And now?

He lowered his head to his knees and wept.

And in a blinding flash, as if the scales had been lifted from his eyes,
he knew that nothing would ever be the same for him again. The time
to hesitate was over. The time had come at last to make it real.

He thought: I am entitled to a place on the planet, after all.

He lifted his eyes to the light.

The dwarfs face was inches away. The diminutive features, the taut
lips, the narrow brow, the close, lidded eyes, wise and all-forgiving. The
sweet scent of an unknown after-shave lotion wafted from his skin.

“The past doesn’t matter,” said the dwarf. He placed the short fingers
of one hand on Victor’s head. “To hell with it all.”

“Yes,” said Victor. For so long he had thought just the opposite. But
now he saw a way out. “Oh, yes.”

“Tell me what you feel from this moment on,” said the dwarf. “I need
to know.”

“I don’t know how,” said Victor.

“Try.”

Victor stared into the dark, polished eyes, shiny as a doll’s eyes.

“I want to. I—I don’t know if I can.”

“Of course you can. We’re alone now. You didn’t tell anyone I was
coming, did you, Vic?”

Victor shook his head.

“How thoughtful,” said the dwarf. “How perfect. Like this house. A
great setting. I could tell by your letter you were exactly what I need.
Your kind always are. Those who live in out-of-the-way places, the quiet
ones with no ties. That’s the way it has to be. Otherwise I couldn’t use
you.”

Talking in the Dark 219

“Why do you care what I feel?” asked Victor.

“I told you—research. It gives my work that extra edge. Won’t you tell
me what’s happening inside you right now, Vic?”

“I want to. I do.”

“Then you can. You can if you really want it. Aren’t we all free to do
whatever we want?”

“I almost believed that, once,” said Victor.

“Anything,” said the dwarf firmly. “You can have anything, including
what you want most. Especially that. And what is it you want, Vic?”

“I—I want to write, I guess.”

The dwarfs face crinkled with amusement.

“But I don’t know what to write about,” said Victor.

“Then why do you want to do it?”

“Because I have no one to talk to. No one who could understand.”

“And what would you talk to them about, if you could?”

“I don’t know.”

“Yes, you do.”

“I’m afraid.”

“Tell me, Vic. I’ll understand. I’ll put it down exactly the way you say
it. You want me to relieve your fear? Well, in another minute I’m going
to do that little thing. You will have nothing more to fear, ever again.”

This is it, Victor thought, your chance. Don’t blow it. It’s happening
just the way you had it planned. Don’t lose your nerve. Ask the ques¬
tion—now. Do it.

“But where does it come from?” asked Victor. “The things you write
about. How do you know what to say? Where do you get it? I try, but
the things I know aren’t—”

“You want to know ,” said the dwarf, his face splitting in an uproarious
grin, “where I get my ideas? Is that your question?”

“Well, as a matter of fact—”

“From you, Vic! I get my material from people like you! I get them
from this cesspool you call life itself. And you know what? I’ll never run
out of material, not as long as I go directly to the source, because I’ll
never, ever finish paying you all back!”

Victor saw the large pores of the dwarfs face, the crooked bend to the
nose, the sharpness of the teeth in the feral mouth, the steely glint deep
within the black eyes. The hairs prickled on the back of his neck and he
pulled away. Tried to pull away. But the dwarfs hand stayed on his head.

“Take my new novel, for instance. It’s about an epidemic that’s going
to sweep the nation, leaving a bloody trail from one end of this country
to the other, to wash away all of your sins. At first the police may call it

220 Dennis Etchison

murder. But the experts will recognize it as suicide, a form of hara-kiri,
to be precise, which is what it is. I know, because I’ve made a careful
study of the methods. Perfect!”

The underdeveloped features, the cretinous grin filled Victor with
sudden loathing, and a terrible fear he could not name touched his scalp.
He sat back, pulling father away from the little man.

But the dwarf followed him back, stepping onto the table, one hand
still pressing Victor in a grotesque benediction. The lamp glared behind
his oversized head, his eyes sparkling maniacally. He rose up and up,
unbending his legs, knocking over the bottles, standing taller until he
blocked out everything else.

Victor braced against the table and kicked away, but the dwarf leaped
onto his shoulders and rode him down. Victor reached out, found the
bottle opener and swung it wildly.

“No,” he screamed, “my God, no! You’re wrong! It’s a lie! You’re ...!”

He felt the point of the church key hook into something thick and cold
and began to rip.

But too late. A malformed hand dug into his hair and forced his head
back, exposing his throat and chest.

“How does this feel, Vic? I have to know! Tell my readers!” The other
claw darted into the briefcase and dragged forth a blade as long as a
bayonet, its edge crusted and sticky but still razor-sharp. “How about
this?” cried the dwarf. “And this?”

As Victor raised his hands to cover his throat, he felt the first thrust
directly below the rib cage, an almost painless impact, as though he had
been struck by a fist in the chest, followed by the long, sawing cut through
his vital organs and then the warm pumping of his life’s blood down the
short sword between them. His fingers tingled and went numb as his
hands were wrapped into position around the handle. The ceiling grew
bright and the world spun, hurling him free.

“Tell me!” demanded the dwarf.

A great whispering chorus was released within Victor at last, rushing
out and rising like a tide to flood the earth, crimson as the rays of a
hellishly blazing sun.

But his mouth was choked with his own blood and he could not speak,
not a word of it. The vestiges of a final smile moved his glistening lips.

“Tell me!” shrieked the dwarf, digging deeper, while the room turned
red. “I must find the perfect method! Tell me!”

*

THE YEAR'S BEST HORROR STORIES

To Dave Carson

... and there are certain persons—artists twisted and corroded by their
genius—of whom it truly may be said: Here is one who would rather

blow out a candle than curse the light.

—Kent Allard
The Futility of Awareness

INTRODUCTION

Nurturing Nightmares

Welcome to The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series XN.

For some of you this may be your first look at the series; some of you
have been readers since the first. A complete set of all fourteen DAW
Books editions will fill about nine inches of your shelf and furnish you
with enough concentrated shivers to push 10 on the Richter scale. It will
also provide an outstanding cross section of the best in horror short
fiction over the past fifteen years.

But here, however, you have the best horror stories from the past
year—the pick of several hundred of stories published here and abroad
during 1985. As always, I have attempted to select these with regard only
to overall excellence. There are no taboos, no obligatory Big Names, no
restrictions as to any particular type, theme or sub-genre of horror fiction.
These are the nineteen stories from 1985 that best succeeded in creating
a moment of fear—whether at intellectual or at gut level.

I think you will be intrigued by this year’s blend: seventeen short
stories, a novelette, and a novella. There are the familiar names as well
as new ones—for more than half of the writers here, this is their first
appearance in The Year’s Best Horror Stories . Twelve of the writers are
American, six are British, and one is Canadian. A bit over half of the
selections are from small press sources, the rest from newsstand maga¬
zines or anthologies. In technique, these stories range from the tradi¬
tional to the experimental, from creepy-crawly nasties to psychological
terrors. Some embody a macabre sense of humor, others may pull at your
heart—and some may tear it right out. In arranging my notes, I realized
that three of the authors here are widely published poets, their prose
techniques are dissimilar, yet each story is touched by fire.

The stories here represent the best of horror fiction at the midpoint of
the 1980s. I was somewhat surprised to note that only two of these
nineteen writers were bom before World War II. Such selection was
certainly not intentional, and I suspect it represents the renewed energy

223

224 nurturing nightmares

that has marked the horror genre over the past decade or so. It’s
interesting that both of the pre-War-generation writers have turned to
horror fiction only in recent years.

In the early years of the pulps, science fiction writers began their
careers after having been influenced by The Classics—meaning Jules
Verne, H. G. Wells, or perhaps that American newcomer, Edgar Rice
Burroughs. Horror writers of that day looked back to Edgar Allan Poe as
The Master, and a later generation was inspired by H. P. Lovecraft or M.
R. James. Just as today’s science fiction writers march to different drums,
the new generation of horror writers has been inspired by a later
hierarchy of classics. Several of the authors here have mentioned the
names of others of the authors in The Year’s Best Horror Stories: Series
XN as representing particular influences or inspirations for their own
writing. We seem to propagate like vampires.

A dozen years ago your editor attended the First World Fantasy
Convention and was on a panel entitled “New Voices in Fantasy.” Other
panel members were such unknown newcomers as Ramsey Campbell,
Charles L. Grant, and David Drake. I suppose some will now consider us
to be The Old Guard.

Or soon will. The horror genre is vital, changing—and constantly
attracting new writers with new ideas and new techniques.

Maybe you’re one of them.

How’s that bite on your neck.

—Karl Edward Wagner

Penny Daye

Charles L. Grant

The recent boom in horror fiction spawned a host of thirty-day wonders
and a legion of instantly forgettable books. The best that can be said of
the boom is that it also delivered from obscurity a number of outstanding
horror writers whose talents hitherto had been stuffed beneath a bushel
basket. I’m certain that Charles L. Grant would have continued to write
superior horror fiction until they found him frozen over his typewriter in
some unheated garret. Poetic, no doubt—but nicer to see excellence
recognized.

Born in New Jersey in 1942, Grant began writing successfully in the
late 1960s, and since 1975 he has been able to devote full time to this
career. To date he has written or edited some forty books, in addition to
another twenty or so under various pseudonyms. Grant was Guest of
Honour at Fantasycon IX and then Master of Ceremonies at Fantasycon
X — England’s predecessor to the World Fantasy Convention. “Penny
Daye” was written for the Fantasycon XProgramme Booklet and reflects
Grant’s affection for England—and his finely tuned awareness of the
darker side of existence.

I was well on my way to being drunk when I first saw Penny Daye, and
there have been moments since when I think that perhaps I should have
finished the journey. It would not have spared me grief, and it would not
have brought me absent luck, but had I done so, I am almost sure I would
not have seen the stones, or the Plain, and I would not have heard the
wind and the voices it carries.

Almost.

Not quite.

Though I had a number of what I had thought at the time were
perfectly good excuses for that onset of inebriation, there were no real
reasons were honesty forced upon me. That I was alone, and in a strange
country, low on funds and lower still on spirit, should not by themselves
have tempted me into the Salisbury pub; but in concert with an afternoon

225

226 Charles L. Grant

more gray than light, more winter than fall, I was an easy prey for
self-induced depression, easier prey still for the dark bitter stout that was
my substitution for lunch.

I suppose I didn’t make a very good impression on my English cousins
that afternoon, but I rationalized it by reminding myself that I was
actually a Scot and therefore need not apologize for any discomfort I
caused the oppressors.

That I was American bom and bred made no difference to my by then
somewhat befuddled mind; that day I was a Scot, and made my silent
toast across the water.

It was well over an hour, I think, before I finally realized that if I didn’t
move soon, if I didn’t get some fresh air and something solid in my
stomach, I’d probably have to be carried to my train. The potential
embarrassment stirred me, ancestral pride be damned, and I paid my bill
and did my best not to stagger outside.

The air was damp, too chilled by the wind for my light jacket and
sweater, and I decided to head directly back to the station and punish
my stupidity by sitting on a hard and cold British Rail bench, fully
exposed to the elements while I waited for transport back to London.

I didn’t, however, have all that far to go.

The pub was just around the comer and down a gentle slope from my
destination, and as I made my way upward, stifling a few belches and
grimacing at the sour aftertaste, I decided there had to be something
hitched to my fate that was preventing me from seeing Stonehenge, only
a few miles away. This was the second time I had made the journey, and
the second time circumstance had prevented me from completing the
not-very-long trip out to the stones.

The first occasion was just over a year ago, when I was here with a
companion who, on my more charitable days, I might have called my
riancee. She was not, if the truth be known, all that interested in places
of possible human sacrifice if she couldn’t at least see a bit of dried blood,
and she talked me at the last into a sidetrip to what she called a quaint,
authentic market in the centre of town, near the cathedral, where most
of our allotted funds for the day were spent, and soon forgotten. We
barely did make the last train.

She is long gone now, coping in California with a budding screen¬
writer, and though I had kidded myself about actually wanting to visit
the ruins this time, I think it was merely one more way to flay myself for
losing her, and to hate myself for not having the courage to do anything
about it.

Slowly then, with hands deep in my trouser pockets, I made my way

Penny Daye 227

morosely to the red-brick stationhouse, found the right track, and sat
down.

And saw her.

She was on the platform opposite, silently standing apart from a group
of young people in varying shades of leather, and those whose hair had
been dyed several unnatural but undeniably attractive colours. They
were singing boisterously. She was holding her hands in front of her,
ignoring them and staring at me.

At least, I thought she was staring at me.

Her coat was camel’s hair, her scarf burgundy, her hat a black tarn
prettily cocked on deep black hair. Though I leaned forward a bit and
stared, I could not quite make out her features; it was as if the area had
recently been swept through by a faint, disorienting fog. But I knew she
was lovely, could see her well enough to make out the pinches of red at
her full round cheeks.

It was the drink that made me bold enough to smile.

It must have been the drink that made me think she smiled back and
nodded.

Then one of those high-speed monsters blasted through the station,
scattering dust and scraps of paper and forcing my eyes closed. The noise
one of those trains makes is not unlike the prolonged clap of the sound
barrier being shattered, and when it was gone and my eyes were open
again, the place where she stood was empty.

I got to my feet at once and moved towards the tracks.

The kids were still there, but she was gone.

I turned then toward the stairs, thinking rather hopefully that she had
been attracted to me and had decided to join me, shaking my head at
the conceited notion, yet straightening myself up all the same.

She didn’t come.

And had not my own train arrived at just that moment, I think I would
have gone in search of her. But there were meetings in the city I had to
attend, business partners to appease for my recent lack of success, and
ruffled feathers to be oiled down with flagrant promises and white lies.

I needn’t have worried.

I saw her again, one month later.

It was one week from the end of my trip, and I didn’t want to go back.
I had seen enough of London, enough of the country, to realize that the
legendary British reserve was no more a fact than the so-called cold
indifference of New Yorkers. My business, if not my self-esteem, had been
temporarily salvaged, my interest in history reawakened simply by
walking through so much of it so well preserved, and I was, at the last.

228 Charles L. Grant

almost calling it home, even to the point of feeling disgusted whenever
I saw American tourists making boors of themselves.

I was no longer a tourist, you see; I was fitting in, and I liked it.

So I decided that I would, by god and damn the torpedoes, get back
to Salisbury and see those damned stones.

So I took the train, walked down the hill and decided to have a pint
to warm me up before catching the bus.

Which I did, though it was more than one, and though it took me near
to an hour before I started out again.

And thus I was encased in a mellow, autumnal glow when I caught
the bus, sat on the upper deck on the bench seat in front, and watched
the town and countryside lurch past me as we headed for Salisbury Plain.
I dozed a little; the bus’s interior was quite warm. I listened to an elderly
woman chiding her husband for forgetting something at the market; her
voice was strident, and we were the only ones up there. And I began to
think that perhaps I wouldn’t go home after all. To be honest, there wasn’t
much there for me to go back to—an apartment, an office, the infrequent
evening excursion to dinner and to bed.

It all seemed, suddenly, awfully bleak and weary.

Then the bus ground gears over the crest of a low hill, and I leaned
forward in my front seat, and saw them.

My first reaction was one of disappointment. In the movies, and on
the postcards, the monoliths appeared to be hundreds of feet high; they
weren’t. And the circle they described was considerably smaller than I
had imagined. But as the roadway dipped and we approached the turnoff
to the parking lot on our right, I felt it. Even on the clattering, fume-filled
bus I felt it quite strongly—a sense of age, a sense of melancholy, and I
swear that a chill momentarily prickled along my arms.

I couldn’t wait to get off, and did so immediately the bus pulled over.
There were a number of tourist coaches filling, and several cars pulling
out. The ringstones were on the other side of the highway, and one had
to purchase a ticket here, then walk through a tunnel under the road, to
a ramp that led up to the monuments themselves.

I stared dumbly at the ticket window.

“Closed?” I said. “How the hell can Stonehenge be closed, for god’s
sake?”

The woman behind the glass smiled sadly and shrugged. Rules, she
told me, were rules, and she couldn’t let me pass.

I turned my gaze from her to the tunnel, back again and sighed. The
return bus to Salisbury was already gone, and another wouldn’t be along
for well over an hour. Still, I told myself sternly, you’re here and you

Penny Daye 229

might as well make the best of it, don’t you think? So I walked up to the
verge and looked over the other side.

They were there, lying, tilting, standing, a worn path in a great arc
around them, a rope-fence to keep the souvenir hunters from taking their
chips and gouges.

I felt it again—age, and melancholy, and the wind that danced
continuously over the Plain, rounding the ringstones’ edges and flatten¬
ing the low grass, putting voices in my ears that I could not understand.

I imagine I made a rather forlorn picture, because a few minutes later
a stout puffing man in a smart dark uniform and round cap came up
beside me. He was much shorter than I, his face red and creased, and
without a word he handed me a fat silver flask.

“Pity,” he said, instinctively knowing my position. “It’s best to come
here alone, too. You come in a group, there’s all chattering and questions
and you can’t get a true feel for what you see, if you know what I mean.”

I nodded.

We introduced ourselves then, after another round of something that
had no relation to brandy, but had the fire just the same. His name was
Peter Jones, and he was a guide for the helpless who didn’t know what
they were looking at.

We talked, and we sipped, and we stared at the circle until, as the sky
darkened and a fleet of black clouds massed on the horizon, he took my
arm. I frowned. He winked and said that we can’t have reporters all the
way from America losing out on this last chance, now can we? I grinned,
then, and followed him, down the incline, past the ticket booth and
through the tunnel. No one stopped us, though someone who might have
been his boss gave him a dark, disgusted look.

By the time we climbed up the other side, we were alone.

“Do you want the lecture, John Dalton?” he asked.

I shook my head. He had spoken in a reverential whisper, and I knew
why—this place, far larger, far more grand than the space it occupied,
was more like a cathedral than any cathedral I’d ever been to. If I were
so inclined, I would have said that the forces which had created it, and
sustained it, were still hard at work in preservation, and perhaps prepa¬
ration.

I shivered.

Peter nodded and passed me the flask.

We made the circuit, all the way around to the ragged, aslant Heel
Stone, and I was trying to imagine what the circle must have been like
with all its pieces intact and standing, when I saw her.

The woman from Salisbury station.

230 Charles L. Grant

She was in the middle of the monument, wearing the same clothes,
sitting on one of the fallen blocks.

I grabbed Peter’s arm and pointed. He looked, lifted his shoulders
against the wind, and pulled me back off the path before handing me the
flask. By this time I was more warm inside than out, and my mind had
a tendency to wander into places where I knew I didn’t belong. But I did
see her. I wasn’t so drunk that I was imagining it. I knew she was there.

Especially when Peter said, “She’s dead, you know.”

“Is she?” I asked calmly, and didn’t object when he pulled me down onto
the ground, where we sat cross-legged, watching that beautiful woman
watching us. She was framed now between two of the larger, linteled pieces,
and there was nothing behind her but the circle and the sky. We heard no
cars, no buses, no planes passed overhead. “Is she really?”

“Indeed.” He looked at me sideways. “You’re not afraid?”

I shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“Good man. There are those I know who tend to feel a little threatened
when they see her. Mind, she’s never done anyone, but it is a bit
unsettling, you’ve got to give it that.”

It was.

And what was worse—I felt a dim part of me shrieking with laughter
because here I was, sitting on dead grass with a dead-drunk guide, staring
at a dead woman and believing every word.

“A shame,” I said.

“It is that.”

“What killed her?”

“Oh, the stones.”

“What happened? One of them fall?”

We passed the flask.

“No, nothing like that, John, nothing at all. She came here one day in
winter ... oh, a few years back it was. All alone. Sat right where she’s
sitting now and froze to death.”

“That doesn’t make any sense. Surely someone would have seen her.
You, maybe, or one of the others.”

Jones shook his head. “No one. Not until the next morning. It was
snowing, you see, and with the fences, the road closed, no one saw her
until dawn. A motorist. He called the constables in Amesbury and they
came out to fetch her. Too late, of course. Frozen stiff, and make no
mistake about it.”

She was beautiful. I still couldn’t see her features clearly for the wind
blowing in my eyes, but she was beautiful.

“Suicide,” I guessed.

Penny Daye 231

“No. The stones.”

“You said that already.”

“So I did. Well, I’ll say it a third time—it was the stones that did it.”

“She tried to take a piece of them?”

He scoffed, and we shared the last of the drink before he pointed to
someone’s name spray-painted on one of the monoliths’ faces. “What are
you thinking, man, the stones were protecting themselves? Then why
didn’t they take care of the little bugger what did that?”

I didn’t know.

I belched.

“Cute little darling, isn’t she,” he said.

“I think I’m in love.”

“Oh, yes, you might be. You might be at that.”

“You think so?”

He nudged me with an elbow, gave me a wink. “Why don’t you
introduce yourself?” And he giggled.

“We’ve already met. Sort of.”

“Really, now. You don’t say. Where?”

“At the station. The train station in Salisbury. I saw her on the
platform, and she smiled at me.”

Peter sighed with delight. “Ah, so she’s getting around at last. It’s nice.
I’d hate to think of her being stuck out here all the time.”

A sudden gust nearly shoved me over, and my head cleared for an
instant. “Jesus,” I said, “we’re talking about a damned ghost!”

“Penny Daye,” he replied.

“What?”

“Penny Daye. That’s her name. You should at least know her name if
you’re going to make remarks.”

I scrambled unsteadily to my feet and stood over him.

“Peter, sober up, for god’s sake.” I passed a hand over my eyes, took
a deep breath, and looked again.

She was still there.

Smiling at me.

“Jesus,” I whispered.

Peter hiccoughed.

I wanted to clout him over the head then, kick at him, force him to
admit that he was playing a marvelous, and certainly well-executed, joke
on me. But he only burst into cackling laughter and rolled onto his back,
his cap spinning away in the wind, the flask bouncing free on the grass.

I waved at him disgustedly and started for the circle, watching the
woman as her smile broadened and she adjusted her coat primly over

232 Charles L. Grant

her knees. When I reached the restraining rope, I stepped over it, barely
thinking that I might be laying myself open for a hell of a big fine, and
ignored Peter’s sudden shout of warning.

For which of us, I didn’t know.

She winked, and one hand lifted to rest against her cheek, an invitation
to dance if I ever saw one.

Peter yelled again as I passed under the lintel.

I turned and grinned at him, swayed when the wind touched me,
swayed again when it stopped.

And when I turned back, she was gone.

I nearly fell in my haste to get to where she’d been sitting, and did fall
once I reached it, by snaring my foot in a depression hidden in tangled
grass. My hands flew out to catch me, and I still came up against the
stone hard with my chest, momentarily knocking the air from my lungs.
My eyes teared, my ribs protested, and it was several gasping minutes
before I was able to straighten up and look around.

She was gone.

So was Peter.

And suddenly I was too tired to chase after either one of them.

Too many drinks, too many years, too many disappointments of which
this had to be the last straw.

At that moment there was a rage I didn’t think I had in me, and I didn’t
care if anyone saw what I was doing; I hoisted myself up and sat there,
ankles crossed, hands in my lap, looking out over the Plain and listening
to the wind, watching the light vanish, watching the shadows grow out
of the stones.

And hearing the aged voices that cling to the air, filled with angry tears
and angry questions I have seen myself shed and heard myself ask
whenever I turn on my light and there’s no one home but me.

I think there’s a hint of snow in the air.

Voices in false melancholy, telling me now as they have told Penny
Daye and all the others before her that if I could do to the world what I
believed the world had done to me, I will not have to stay long.

All I need is one person. One woman. Perhaps finding her on the bus,
or at the station, or on a corner. One woman to smile at, one woman
who knows what it’s like to be alone.

He’s dead, you know, Peter will say.

A woman to love me fleetingly, to cherish me briefly, dream of me just
once in a large empty bed.

Froze to death, right where he’s sitting.

To lure to my side because that’s all there is left.

Penny Daye 233

The stones did it.

It made me smile, as it had made her smile before she brought me to
the place where the stones held me fast.

The stones.

It brought a color to my cheeks I haven’t had since I was a child, a
color I would take with me, as she had, to find me.

It’s the color of the weak and the meek and those who suffer for
romance, because romance has no heart.

It’s Penny Daye’s color.

It’s the color of revenge.

Dwindling

David B. Silva

David. B. Silva is editor/publisher of The Horror Show, a quarterly
magazine and one of the most promising small-press publications of
recent years. Often when a small-press editor also has ambitions as a
writer, the temptation to publish his own work is irresistible and the
results almost certainly unfortunate. Not so for Silva, who has avoided
this trap and chosen instead to publish his stories elsewhere—and with
considerable success—in a number of small-press magazines (‘‘Dwin¬
dling” is from Spectrum Stories) and in anthologies such as Masques,
Cold Sweats, and Damnations. Born July 11, 1950 in Carmel, Califor¬
nia, Silva now lives in Oak Run, California—dividing his time about
75-25 between The Horror Show and his own fiction. Silva has been
writing for about five years now, and he has a novel due out from Leisure
Books.

In the summer, just after school let out, the pastures were still green and
there was a freshness in the air that wouldn’t die until the raw August
temperatures broiled it from memory. The wind was tender and breezy
then. During the day, the sky was a faint blue. But near sundown it would
open its throat and the blue would turn purple, thick and rich and
friendly. It had always been a special time of year for Derrick.

As he scooted off the last bus, making its last stop of the school year,
and gazed across the forever fields to the farmhouse, a vague and chilling
premonition marched in gooseflesh up his arms. The sensation was too
obscure to trouble him. But as he kicked stones at his younger brothers
and slowly made his way home, he made note of the bitter feeling and
how similar it tasted to the bitterness he had experienced the day before
Grandma Sanders had died. Then Georgie hit him in the back with a dirt
clod and the feeling was put aside.

Six-year-old Tammy folded her hands in front of her, bowed her head,

235

236 David B. Silva

and took a deep breath. “Thank you, Lord, for this food upon our table.
Amen.”

“Amen,” said in chorus, then hands, small-medium-large, reached for
com on the cob and broth of chicken and fresh green salad made of
lettuce and tomato, bell pepper and carrot, celery and onion. There was
hot homemade bread and cold unpasteurized milk. Everything and
everyone that was important in Derrick’s life was all right there. Except
for...

“Where’s Sarah?” he asked as he buttered a slice of bread that warmed
the palm of his hand. And when no one answered, he asked again,
“Where’s Sarah?” this time looking directly at his mother. Her eyes
seemed tired, as if she were gone somewhere faraway in a daydream. A
swirl of black hair, singed with lean flames of gray, fell across her
forehead. She brushed it back, seeming never to have left the daydream.
“Mom?”

“Hmm?” she said, only half-there.

“I asked where Sarah was?”

“Who?”

“Sarah.”

For a moment, there was an eerie pause in the meal. Forks stalled in
mid-air. Mouths were closed, ears were opened, and a dozen questioning
eyes turned to stare at him. Who’s Sarah?

Then Tammy grinned, and with her mouth full of thick, cheesy
casserole, she said, “Betcha Derr’s got a girlfriend.”

Derrick felt himself blushing then, even though he had nothing at all
to blush about. He was just curious about Sarah, that’s all. No big deal.
He was sure she was all right, someone would have told him if she
weren’t. So he smiled uncomfortably and turned back to his plate of
vegetables, doing his best to divert the attention away from him.

His thoughts about Sarah would just have to wait.

Derrick didn’t breathe another word of her until he was in bed that
night. Brian was already asleep in the comer, one of his arms hanging
off the edge of the bed, his hand brushing against the floor. Georgie was
tossing in the bottom bunk, rocking himself back and forth as he did
every night until he eventually fell asleep. From the upper bunk, Derrick
whispered, “Georgie?”

“What?” The light sway of the bunk beds stopped.

“Where’s Sarah?”

The rocking started up again.

“Georgie?”

Dwindling 237

“I don’t know.” * *-

Derrick leaned over the edge of his bed. “If you don’t stop that blessed
rocking, I’m gonna slug you.”

“I don’t even know who she is,” his brother whispered.

And for a moment, Derrick couldn’t believe his ears. “She’s your sister,”
he said. “Your sister! The one that tried to eat the tail right off your kite
yesterday.”

“That was Tammy,” his brother quietly said before he rolled over, face
to the wall, back to Derrick where he could see a luminescent iron-on
patch of the Incredible Hulk glowing green in the dark. “Ain’t one pesky
sister bad enough for you?”

Derrick could have argued. He could have pointed out a handful of
recent incidents when little Sarah had pestered both of them. Little sisters
did things like that. And eventually he could have made Georgie admit
that Sarah was missing. But he didn’t. Somewhere inside, gnawing at his
gut. Derrick knew that there had never been a Sarah, that her four years
of giggling and gurgling and crying—sometimes all night long—had
been little more than an imaginative spasm, a bizarre tic on the face of
his reality. And that’s why they had all stared at him with eyes that asked.
Who’s Sarah? Because there was no Sarah. His imagination had been
playing games in his head, as it must do with everyone, as it did when
Tammy played tea party with playmates that weren’t really there.

An imaginative spasm.

That’s what it was.

The summer’s first one-hundred-degree temperature arrived less than
a week later, pushing the mercury above the red zone on the rusting
Orange Crush thermometer that had been tacked to the big oak as long
as Derrick could remember.

Pa had allowed them the day down at Miner’s Pond. Clad in cut-offs
made from an old pair of jeans he’d worn out during the winter. Derrick
was busy cleaning the spring weeds out of the little patch of sand which
covered the ground between the water and the cliff of rock they used as
a diving platform. The others were already in the water, squirming and
churning enough to make the pond look like a pot of boiling watercress
soup.

Tammy let out a squeal just before Brian dunked her.

Sometimes, like now, when her hair was damp and it closely embraced
her thin, almost-hollow cheeks, he would see Sarah looking out from
Tammy’s laughing eyes. Even though he realized that there had never
been a Sarah. And when he remembered those special things she would

238 David B. Silva

do, those special things his imagination had made so real for him—like
the time she tried to cut her own hair and Ma nearly had to shave her
head to make it all even again—after times like those, he wished she had
been more than just a daydream.

But she hadn’t. He knew that now. She was gone, her dolls were gone,
her clothes were gone. There had never been a real Sarah.

Derrick collapsed into the soft sand and sifted his strange emptiness
from hand to hand in the form of a thousand gritty particles.

“Come on, Derr,” one of the others called.

He smiled and shook his head, all of a sudden feeling too old to be
splashing carelessly in Miner’s Pond. And he felt a little sad just then, as
if at age twelve he had suddenly realized that the time was nearing when
he would have to give up some of those cherished things that stood
between being a boy and being a man. Perhaps the joy of Miner’s Pond.
Perhaps some other never-to-be-forgotten place or time or person.

That’s what his parents had done. Over the years, they had somehow
given up their happiness for something else, something he wasn’t sure
he understood. And maybe that was what growing up was all about.
Giving away those things you liked most about yourself.

If so, it didn’t seem fair.

“Derr, come on!”

It didn’t seem fair at all.

Derrick wiped sand from the butt of his cut-offs, and with a laughter
he wasn’t yet ready to give up, he did a painful belly flop into the circle
of his brothers and sister.

It felt great.

They played away the afternoon, exploring creek rocks for crawdads,
building a miniature dam to house minnows, diving off the cliff, playing
tag up and down the creek’s banks until their feet were sore and their
bodies were bright pink from too much sun.

It was getting time to head back home again.

Derrick had gathered up the towels they had brought along, and the
lunch bags which Ma would want returned for recycling. The others were
down the creek a ways. He could hear their laughter whistling through

the pawlike leaves of the oak trees.

“Gotta go!” he yelled as he shook the sand out of the towels. He liked
being big brother, the one they looked up to and depended upon.
Sometimes, he felt more like their father than their brother.

“Let’s go!” he called again.

Dwindling 239

The boys came bursting through the bushes. Brian collapsed in the
sand. “Beat ya,” he said, lying flat on his back.

“Did not,” Georgie cried. His arms were braced on his legs as he
collected a breath. His eyes kept looking to Brian, as if he knew he had
been beaten and wondered if his younger brother might make too big a
deal out of it.

“Where’s Tammy?” Derrick asked. “Pa’s gonna be real upset if we don’t
get ourselves back by supper time.”

Brian dragged himself to his feet. “I beat ya,” he said again, pushing
Georgie up the side of the short bank. When they had made it to the top,
they stopped and turned back to their older brother. “Thought you were
in a hurry.” Brian said.

“What about Tammy?”

Then there was a short pause that seemed to last forever, and his
brothers exchanged a curious glance. Then a chill wound up Derrick’s
spine as he recognized their bewilderment. He didn’t inquire a third time.
The story was still fresh in his mind. Who’s Tammy? Just another spasm,
that’s all. No need to ask further, just fill in the blanks. There is no Tammy.
There never has been. She was just a product of the same game, the same
hiccup of imagination that birthed Sarah. And now they were both gone.
An imaginative quirk, that’s all it was.

“Derr, it’s getting late.”

He glanced up at the voice and wondered, almost casually, if the two
boys who had been his brothers for almost every minute of his life, if
they too, were mere quirks. The thought scared him.

“Derr...”

“Yeah,” he said, flipping the towels over his shoulders. “Coming.”

Tammy never returned. He knew she wouldn’t. And like his parents
and his brothers, he never asked about her.

That night, Brian went off to sleep in his own room, the room that
Derrick’s imagination had lent to Sarah and Tammy. It seemed lonelier
without Brian sleeping in the comer, without his arm hung over the edge
of the bed, brushing a hand against the floor. At least he still felt the
comfort of Georgie’s rocking, the comfort of the bunk bed swaying back
and forth as it had always done as long as he could remember. At least
that hadn’t been taken from him.

Summertime lost its magic after that. The days became too hot.
Miner’s Pond too cold. The beautiful yellows and greens around the farm
shriveled, becoming deathly browns. The laughter that had so often

240 David B. Silva

swept around the dinner table, became a whisper, a cough of its past joy.
Everything changed, and somewhere along the line, memories of yester¬
days gradually became more and more difficult to call up again, as if
pieces of his life were somehow being consumed. The magic of summer¬
time had been lost and everything was suddenly different.

Even his parents seemed somehow different, somehow changed. He
wasn’t sure exactly what the difference was, and wondered if perhaps it
was merely his imagination at play again.

“Remember before?” Derrick heard his mother ask his father one
night. They were outside on the front porch, casually gliding back and
forth on the porch swing, allowing themselves to be overheard by the
evening stars and by Derrick himself. He was upstairs in the attic, poking
through old boxes of toys, searching for a game of Cootie which he hadn’t
seen in years. Just a bored-night impulse, that was the only reason he
was there.

“Before what?” Pa said.

The arthritic squeaking of metal to rusting metal filled the moment of
silence and drew Derrick curiously closer to the window.

“Before we got married,” she said. “Remember how we used to walk
along Dogwood Creek at night and the breeze would rustle through the
trees, sounding like God himself was trying to talk to us? And how we
always knew we’d get married and live out the rest of our lives together?
How it was never gonna change?”

Pa chuckled. “I remember.”

“I miss those times,” she told him.

“Guess I do, as well.”

“They were good times.”

“The best,” his Pa agreed.

“I want to go back.” The rhythmic squeaking paused for a breath, then
started up again. I want it to be like it was then, without the worries and
the fears, without the kids and the farm to look after.”

Pa didn’t say so much as “Hmm.”

“Mind ya. I’m not unhappy,” she said. “But it’s all slipping by so quickly.
I want to do it all again. I want to court and marry and make babies all
over again, like it was the first time.”

“Been feeling this way all summer, have you?”

Derrick couldn’t see them on the porch, they were sitting almost right
underneath him, but he imagined her nodding her head. He stepped back
from the window, suddenly feeling a strange sense of shame from his
eavesdropping, realizing his ears had crossed the path of something they
were never meant to hear. But they had heard, and Ma had been different

Dwindling 241

all summer. Perhaps that was the only trick of his imagination that hadn’t
really been a trick. She had been different. The whole summer had been
different.

He left the attic without ever finding the game of Cootie.

Brian blinked out of his life two days later. Derrick woke up to find
the bottom bunk empty and when he went searching for Georgie, he
found the ten-year-old in Brian’s room where Brian should have been,
rocking Brian’s bed the way he used to rock the bunk beds.

“What are you doing in here?” he asked. “Where’s Brian?”

Through sleepy eyes, Georgie expressed his puzzlement, that same
puzzlement that had surfaced after each of Derrick’s summer-long in¬
quiries, after each loss that had seemingly slipped away unnoticed. And
Derrick knew, he knew and he understood and he felt the emptiness
devour another portion of his life. Georgie was all he had left, and what
would happen after his last brother slipped away?

What would happen then?

It was early August all too soon. The fields were dry and dusty. Miner’s
Pond had dipped so low that a soul couldn’t dive off the cliffs without
meeting the bottom head first. His mom was looking different by the day.
His father was too. Like the summer hadn’t withered them like everything
else it touched. Like they thrived somehow on the heat and the dirt and
the peace that had shadowed the farm. That’s what it was—peace. Too
much for Derrick’s liking. The meals were too quiet, the days too empty.

He stayed close to Georgie whenever he could, whenever he wasn’t
off tending to chores or running errands or sleeping in his own bed, a
wall away from his little brother. But it happened just the same.

He woke up one morning and he was the last, all his brothers and all
his sisters were finally gone. He was all that remained. And he imagined
his parents breathing a heavy sigh, relieved that at last the inevitable
moment was near, the moment when their oldest child would finally slip
away like the others.

There were days now, unlike past summers, when he wished he had
never been the oldest, the last to go. How much easier it would have
been to have simply slipped away like Sarah, right at the beginning, never
having to watch as the others were taken one by one, never having to
feel each loss. How much easier.

Each day thereafter painfully dwindled away, seconds feeling like
minutes, minutes like hours, until his leave-taking finally arrived. It was
nine-thirty. The sky was black on a moonless night. The window was
open, inviting the slight breeze inside to chase away the godawful heat.

242 David B. Silva

It was like a thousand other summer nights, yet unlike any that had come
his way before. From the top bunk, with his arms folded behind his neck,
he gazed out the window to the darkness of the universe and wondered
where it ended, wondered if he would float out there after ...

... as he sometimes did in his dreams.

“Derr?” A shaft of hall light sectioned his darkness, and his mother’s
silhouette Filled the doorway. “How you doing?”

“Okay.” He didn’t want to look at her, kept his watch on the universe
instead. It would be easier that way. But she crept into the darkness, right
up next to his bed, and she stood over him, a shaft of light falling across
her face. It was the first time, as he forced himself to look at her, that he
realized just how she had changed over the summer.

“is it too hot for you?”

The singe of gray that had danced like a wind-blown scarf through her
hair was no longer there.

“I’m comfortable.”

And her eyes had come alive again, they had a sparkle in them that
he hadn’t noticed in years.

“You sure?” She brushed the hair away from his forehead, then held
his hand in hers. “You know I love you,” she said.

Derrick glanced out the bedroom window at the watching universe.
He wanted to tell her he still loved her, but knew he wouldn’t be able to
find a way to say the words.

“Remember that,” she said. “Remember I love you.” Then all too
quickly, she turned and started out of the room.

“Ma,” he said, still moving away. “Are you sorry I’m your son? Are you
and Pa sorry you ever had me?”

She paused, a wisp of shadow in the doorway. “Of course not. You’re
our son, our flesh and blood. You’re a part of us. We’ll always love you.”

“Even if I have to go away?”

Her eyes were hidden in a checkerboard pattern of black and white,
but the long silence answered his question for her. And he knew then
that she didn’t even understand what she had done, that it had all been
done out of innocence, out of an ignorance of the consequences of her
wishing. I want to court and marry and make babies all over again, like it
was the first time.

“I still love you, Ma,” he told her. “Even if I have to go away.”

“There’s nowhere to go,” she said. “Nowhere at all.”

The bedroom door closed.

Darkness rushed in through the open window.

Derrick rolled over, rolled away from his doorway to the windowed

Dwindling 243

universe, until he was nestled safely in the wings of his blankets. Then
a single tear tumbled down his cheek, a tear not for himself, but for his
mother.

Dead Men's Fingers

Phillip C. Heath

Born in Austin, Texas in 1953, Phillip C. Heath moved about the
country a bit until the lure of the Lone Star State brought him back again.
Currently he works as a real estate representative for a large corporation
in Dallas. By his own confession, Heath has “a soft spot for the Gothic or
Victorian style”—a fondness that has probably relegated his work to the
pages of small-press publications where they don’t attract the notice his
stories deserve. Heath is a careful craftsman, with a deft touch for
conjuring forth an icy atmosphere of fear. A pity that major horror
markets demand trendy, as opposed to traditional, fiction. Nonetheless,
Heath has established a reputation in the small press, with appearances
in Whispers, Fantasy Tales, Damnations, Gothic, The Horror Show,
and elsewhere. His stories have also been anthologized in The Year’s Best
Fantasy Stories, The Fontana Book of Great Ghost Stories, The Fontana
Book of Great Horror Stories, and Nightmares. “Dead Men’s Fingers” is
from the new Canadian fantasy magazine, Borderland.

So is the great and wide sea also; wherein are things
creeping innumerable, both small and great beasts.

There to the ships, and there is that Leviathan;
whom thou hast made to take his pastime therein.

These wait all upon thee; that thou mayestgive them
meat in due season.

—The Book of Common Prayer

“Sail hooooi”

All eyes were abruptly averted upward.

“Where away?” someone bellowed.

The lookout, seated precariously on his perch in the crosstrees a
hundred feet above the rolling sea, pointed one hand to the horizon,
cupping his mouth with the other. “A barque by the look of ’er,” he sang
out, “ ’ull down about four points forward the starb’rd beam!”

245

246 Phillip C. Heath

The British whaleship , Jezebel, came alive. Every man on board forsook
his various chores and rushed anxiously to the bulwarks to gaze out over
the deep, blue expanse of water. The first mate promptly informed his
superior. Captain Seabury, who emerged from his cabin to join his crew
topside. Adjusting a brass spyglass to his eye, he summarily gave the
order to alter course, and soon the English frigate was tacking toward
the small speck on the skyline roughly three leagues distant.

Undoubtedly a single, similar pattern of thought played through the
minds of the mariners who watched as they steadily closed the distance
between the two vessels. It had thus far been a rather disheartening
voyage: from London across the Atlantic—by now virtually depleted of
the sperm—was a long and tiresome journey in itself. Southward, the
once bountiful Brazil grounds offered few sightings and little encourage¬
ment. On past the chill, barren Falkland Islands, they struggled around
Cape Horn, the southern tip of South America. Though summer in those
latitudes, the ship battled its way through tremendous head seas and
skirted frightful fields of Antarctic ice, enduring howling gales for almost
three weeks, as nights and days merged into gray sameness. Once having
gained the Pacific to the west, they spotted, gave chase and killed two
baleen whales near the island of Massafuero, several hundred miles off
the coast of Chile, but one of them sank before it could be properly
hitched and was lost.

So the men aboard the Jezebel understandably were impatient to reap
the rewards of their hardship. A whaleman’s life was necessarily shaped
by loneliness and exhilaration, tedium and terror; always voracious for
nature’s bounty—if he could persevere to secure it, for he was well aware
of how sorely the odds were against him, and in favor of his adversary.
Admittedly, last year was a very profitable one for Pacific whaling, yet
with scarcely six hundred barrels of oil in the hold no one need be
reminded that scores of ships in the past, for whatever reasons, had
returned home freighting barely enough cargo to pay expenses. Hence,
they were keen to have a customary gam, or visit, with this passing
vessel—hopefully a sister whaler—and leam what favorable prospects
might lie waiting in the vast and trackless sea ahead.

As the Jezebel neared the other ship they saw that it was indeed a
whaler, about one hundred feet long, of approximately 370 tons; and
although was square-rigged except for the mizzenmast, all but the light
sails had been reefed, as if already hove to for the night. Whalers were
seldom under way in darkness except when traveling between whaling
grounds or trailing a wounded whale—but it was scarcely late afternoon.
Closer still, and it was observed that the ship seemed somewhat ne-

Dead Men's Fingers 247

glected; the entire hull was encrusted with barnacles, and it looked a bit
ragged overall. From the way it rode in the water, listing slightly to
starboard, it gave the impression of being either fully laden in bulk or
else had sprung a leak. But what was most peculiar—disconcerting, in
fact—was that there was absolutely no movement or sign of life on deck.
Whereupon someone noticed the pennants flying at three mastheads—a
signal for help.

They maneuvered alongside the other ship, identified by the lettering
on its stem as the Reaper , and lines were thrown across and made fast.

At first the possibility of a plague was debated, and the consequences
of close contact between ships. However, the captain theorized this was
probably not the case, nevertheless restricting anybody from boarding
the vessel unless expressly authorized.

He squinted to the west. “It shall be dark in an hour or so,” he mumbled
to himself. Then, to the boatswain: “Back the maintops’l, and proceed to
snug her for the night. Mr. Cribb?”

The first mate, a swarthy, broad-shouldered chap, appeared at his side.
“Aye, sir?”

“Pick two of the decides to accompany us,” he instructed. “We must
board her and investigate ere nightfall takes us.”

The others were mustered, and the informal party clambered on board
the Reaper. The ship was cloaked in an eerie hush. Only a vagrant, light
breeze periodically set the shrouds to moaning softly.

Captain Seabury turned to the others. “One of you men have a
thorough look-see topside, another search the fo’c’s’le; Mr. Cribb, you
explore the contents of the hold, and I shall locate the captain’s quarters.”
They nodded and separated accordingly.

Belowdecks, it was even more oppressively deserted than above. The
narrow companionway led directly to the captain’s cabin, and Captain
Seabury descended into a deepening gloom. Once in the cabin he called
out to the crowded shadows. “Ahoy! Anyone about?”

There was no answer, save the dull, choppy gurgle of the sea as it
washed along the outer hull of the ship. In the semi-darkness he tripped
over a chair on his way to the captain’s desk, but there found a scrimshaw
lantern and lit the candle nub within. Aided by the dim light he eased
next into the captain’s head, empty, and the captain’s stateroom—which
was not. On the berth reposed the form of a body, covered completely
by a blanket that appeared to be riddled with holes and blotched with
dark stains, which he quickly recognized as dried blood. A discharged
pistol lay on the floor beside the bed. Something thin and white pro¬
truded from the edge of the blanket.

248 Phillip C. Heath

Captain Seabury reached down and jerked off the blanket.

His stomach clenched. It was a human skeleton, still clothed in only
a tatter of rags, and one of the hands held a Bible to its chest. A
conspicuous hole in the side of the skull indicated a suicide.

Unwilling to tarry, Captain Seabury pushed on to the first and second
mates’ cabins which were both unoccupied. But in the former he discov¬
ered the ship’s logbook. This, he knew, should divulge at least some hint
as to what had occurred aboard this mystery ship. The book was opened
to the final entry, dated just two days ago. He was going to scan it there
and then but a sudden noise close by caught his attention, and he
wheeled around, listening.

Yet now there was nothing, only continued silence.

Deciding to wait until later to peruse the journal at length, he
rummaged the pantry. There he found ample reserves of smoked meat,
salt fish, hard-baked rye bread, beans and rice, and other foodstuffs, as
well as kegs of cider and grog. No, it was not starvation that had doomed
the men of the Reaper.

In the steerage the captain discovered a second body sprawled out
near the foot of the companionway ladder, this one a skeleton also. A
small oil-lamp was shattered beneath it, leaving a lightly charred spot.
Evidently the person had been carrying the lamp and stumbled or fallen
upon it with his chest, the flame quickly smothering under his weight.

“Captain! Where ye be?” he heard the first mate calling.

Mr. Cribb emerged from the doorway of the blubber room. When he
espied Captain Seabury hovering over the skeletal remains, he nodded
in acknowledgment. “Aye, I saw it as I came down.” Another of the men
met them and joined in, pointing a thumb behind him. “I found three of
’is mates in the fo’c’s’le—nothing but bones, jest like ’im.”

The trio stood speechless a moment, contemplating the macabre figure
at their feet. Then Mr. Cribb broke the spell.

“Sir, I been to the hole ... I think you’d best take a peek.”

They followed him down the hatchway into the stinking, stifling hold,
black as that of a slave ship. In the wavering shadows they stepped
carefully, for the stairs and gangways were more often than not slick with
oil and scum and could be hazardous.

The captain lifted his light high, and saw no need for explanation as
to Cribb’s discovery. The hold was crammed to capacity with whale
oil—no less than 2,500 barrels!

The first mate drew his master’s attention to the alarming level of
water which covered the ballast and almost all of the bottom rows of
barrels.

Dead Men's Fingers 249

“It’s more than bilge water, sir. See how the frames are unusually
damp? I believe she’s been slowly takin’ on water—shipworms, I’d be
a-guessin’.”

Just then they all heard a distinct scraping, rustling sort of sound,
coming from several pools of darkness beyond the candle’s feeble,
flickering glow.

The third man glanced over his shoulder. “I ’eard quare noises meself,”
he whispered uneasily, “when I was forwurd.”

“And I, too,” added Cribb.

The captain frowned but kept his sedate demeanor. “Rats, most likely.
Though ’tis odd they have not vacated this part of the ship, considering
the seepage.” It was a common fact that rats flourished on such vessels,
attracted by whale oil and blood. But somehow that reassurance did not
put their minds at ease.

Captain Seabury smacked his lips in dismissal. “Well, let us be off. The
rest of the crew will begin to wonder for our safety.”

Once on deck, the fourth sailor reported to the captain.

“The blokes must ’ave bane tryin’-out a whale, sir; but everythin’ seems
to be in a bit of a ’urrah’s nest, like they just up an’ quit. The cuttin’
platform is still in place, and the try-pots is full.”

“Anything else?”

The man nodded quizzically. “Aye, three of the boats is missin’; the
other two ’ave bane deliberately scuttled—aven the spare.” It was true;
the remaining whaleboats hung from their davits, all rendered useless
by a vandal’s axe.

Twilight had by now deepened into dusk, a starry but moonless night.
Back on board the Jezebel Mr. Cribb took Captain Seabury aside for a
private conversation. “What do you suppose, sir?—abandoned a slowly
sinkin’ ship? Mutiny?”

The captain creased his brow in thought. “She’s of Yankee origin,
probably making for home. But a whole crew suddenly deserting in three
whaleboats on the open sea? They wouldst fare a much better chance
staying with her till the end, pressing her as far as possible toward the
nearest landfall. And mutiny?—why leave a full hold? More yet, what of
those sad skeletons? Surely, ’tis a queer business. But perhaps this will
furnish the key.” He tapped the log.

Cribb seemed restless. “By your leave, sir,” he continued, “you know
me not to be a hen-hearted man, but somethin’ about this gives me the
willies. I for one would sleep better this night if that—ship—were cast
off and kept at a wide berth. At least until we can puzzle it out.”

The captain shook his head slowly and clutched the other’s shoulder.

250 Phillip C. Heath

His voice was resolute. “I respect your concern, my friend, but I feel ’tis
unwarranted to that extent. I must also respect the best interests of the
owners of this vessel, and the sole purpose of our voyage. Begad, man,
are you aware of what oil is fetching per ton back in Londontown? Do
you not realize the treasure we have yonder? There is a fortune in her
hold, and by all the laws of salvage that drifting derelict belongs to me.
Tis the good hand of Providence.”

The first mate was still not satisfied. “But sir, many of the men are
superstitious—there will be talk and scuttlebutt. They’ll fancy her a
Jonah.”

The captain began to grow impatient. ‘Then tell them naught. Set the
first dog-watch, and be sure no one gets curious and boards her. At the
crack of dawn we start shipping her cargo.”

The first mate sighed in resignation. “Aye, Captain, I will see to it.”

Captain Seabury watched him go, and relished one last long look at
the swarthy, sinister hulk of the Reaper. Then he went below.

After a supper of crackerhash, prune pie and tea to wash it down, he
met with the other officers to outline plans for the morrow’s task of
loading the considerable quantity of oil. Shortly before midnight, at
seven bells, he returned to his quarters, lit a lamp, and poured himself a
tot of run. Filling his pipe, he settled comfortably into a chair and opened
the leather-bound book to a place dating nine days prior—where,
strangely enough, he noticed, the handwriting changed altogether. The
heading at the beginning of these newer entries, written in a refined,
precise hand, pronounced at the top:

Ship The Reaper of New Bedford.

In the South Pacific Ocean, June, 1846.

Bearings, reckonings and other specifics were noted respectively. The
daily accounts, however, were exceptionally long, more than a few pages
in length. Then he realized this segment of the journal had actually been
backdated, as if to catch up several days’ neglected entries.

Th e Jezebel creaked and rocked lazily to the whim of the sea. So there,
in the solemn tranquility of his cabin. Captain Seabury started to read.

And a most bizarre tale began to unfold ....

The weather had held nicely, being fair but very hot. We were
homeward bound at last after forty-two arduous months at sea, plowing
the deep and farming its green pastures. And it had been a plentiful

Dead Men's Fingers 251

harvest indeed, with our hold quite full. Thus the prospect of still one
more whale was rather looked upon as a cup running over.

Way into the afternoon the cry was sounded: “There blooows!”—our
lookout having glimpsed the familiar ten-to twelve-foot spray of air and
moisture from the animal’s blowhole, visible for up to six miles.

Without delay the bosun began supervising miscellaneous jobs on the
deck, in anticipation of the kill. In jig-time three of the slim whaleboats
had been launched into the water, six men to a boat, myself included,
and we commenced rowing in the direction of the sighting. The boats
were soon scudding across the wavelets, our second mate calling softly,
“Spring on your oars, me hearties. Spring hard, I tell you!”

As we approached, he ordered the oars shipped and paddles brought
out, which were quieter: for though a whale’s vision and smell are poor,
its hearing is acute. A flock of petrels skimmed the water in wide circles,
eager to peck at whatever marine life might be clinging to the whale’s
back. Had the beast itself been feeding, or had it been spooked? If
feeding, it would reappear in the general vicinity within thirty minutes
or so; otherwise, it could swim for ten miles or better before resurfacing
for air. Silent and tense with expectancy, we could simply wait and
watch, floating like a cork on the immensity of the ocean, the sea and
sky vague, warm reflections.

We did not have long to wait. All at once there was a yell from one of
the boats, “He breaches!” as the surface erupted hereabout, the whale
surging out of the sea in a mighty leap. It white-watered with a deafening
sound and again submerged, but not before the mate could make a
reasonable guess at how far the animal would travel under water,
judging from the way its flukes were turned. It was a fairly sizable sperm,
sixty-five feet at least, strangely mottled black and gray in color. He was
an old ill-tempered bull, apparently aware of our presence and somewhat
agitated as well.

Once more we were pulling on our oars. The harpooneer stood at the
ready and braced himself against the clumsy cleat, harpoon in hand. It
was a six-foot shaft connected to a thirty-inch iron rod, tipped with a
razor-edged double-flue barb. During idle periods on ship these fellows
incessantly checked their gear, recoiling lines, sharpening and
resharpening harpoon and lance points, and the time of their preparation
was at hand. The men in the other two boats positioned themselves also.

Suddenly, twenty feet away, there was a tumultuous crash as the
whale surfaced squarely beneath the first mate’s boat, cleaving it in twain
and toppling some of the crew into the frothy, foaming water. Others
clung perilously to the wreckage or lay trapped amidst the tangle of

252 Phillip C. Heath

cordage. Then it dipped forward, twice smashing its broad flukes down
on the floundering men and flotsam with such force as to splinter the
remnants like so much kindling, sending spray into our own boat. There
was only one survivor, whom the other boat managed to reach.

The whale, obviously enraged, continued to rampage nearby, as if
already in pain or fear. Our companion boat attempted to sink a
harpoon—but one of the lines snagged as the thrashing brute moved off
a short distance and abruptly sounded, carrying the boat down therewith
and drowning all but two of the men, our captain being one of the latter.

When the whale resurfaced we were close by—near enough to imme¬
diately put wood to blackskin. The harpoon flashed straight down into
the thick blubber and sank clear to its socket. The island of flesh trembled
for a moment with shock. Then the harpooneer snatched up a second
harpoon, this one tied to an inflated bladder which would tire the animal
should it try to dive again, and was able to drive it to the hilt right beside
the first one. He tossed out a hundred feet of half-inch manilla.

Quickly but carefully the harpooneer took over the steering oar while
the second mate exchanged positions at the bow. And nary a second too
soon, for now the harpoon line was whipping out of the boat. The
wounded whale was off, the two harpoons buried in its flesh.

Wrapped around the snubbing post, the line became taut and the prow
dipped into the water till there were only a few inches of freeboard. The
second mate glanced back apprehensively and shouted, “You look out
what you are about! Do not box the boat down too much—you may flip
her.”

The line whirred faster round the loggerhead until it started to smoke
from the friction, so the nearest oarsman dipped water onto it, hatchet
handy should it be necessary to cut the rope. Our quarry was running
briskly but erratically, dragging us behind it at no less than twelve
knots—the Nantucket sleigh ride.

Then, with a certain horror, we realized that the behemoth was
bearing down on the Reaper. Recollections of oft-told tales went racing
through our minds . . . the legendary depredations and malign intelli¬
gence of such solitary rogues as Mocha Dick, New Zealand Tom, and
Timor Jack. Our ship could, in all likelihood, fall victim to its own prey.
And at the present we were helpless.

Our fears began to materialize. The whale was obviously coming foul
of the ship, as if to stave in her hull. At the crucial instant of impact, he
slowed and swerved, grazing the vessel’s keel with the side of its gigantic
head and body, and shearing away part of the hull’s copper sheathing as
he went along and came to leeward. But by the life of us, it appeared the

Dead Men's Fingers 253

leviathan had no ill-intent upon the ship as such, but was merely finding
some sort of relief in scraping its hide against her broadside.

Yet the danger was in no ways past, for as the whale of a sudden
nudged sharply amidships an astonished sailor engrossed in the excite¬
ment leaned too far over the rail and was knocked off balance, plunging
headlong over the side. The poor devil fell in front of the monster and
was swept directly into the creature’s great jaw where the eight-inch-long
teeth of the powerful bottom jaw clamped shut, crunching his hapless
victim to pulp. It happened almost within the blinking of an eye.

With fresh advance we took hold of the line and rounded in slack,
cautiously moving in for the coup de grace. Although tiring quickly, in
close quarters the beast could still crush us like an eggshell. Once within
range the second mate unsheathed one of his lances, an eleven-foot spear
with steel oval blade, and aimed for the vulnerable area behind the right
flipper at approximately eye level. This was the life of the whale, whither
the animal’s massive arteries converged near its heart and lungs. With
quick dexterity and skill the lance was given its critical, killing thrust,
striking home and slicing with terrible efficiency through the windpipe.
Thereupon the whale’s lungs were flooded and the supply of blood to
the heart dwindled.

“Stem all,” our mate called again, and we backed the boat off to a safe
distance. The whale briefly submerged, surfaced, and spouted a pinkish-
red mist. “We have him now,” someone exclaimed. “See—his chimney
is afire!”

The death throes did not last long. After about five minutes he rolled
dead on his side.

The crew wasted no time in lowering the slender scaffolds of the
cutting-in stage over the whale and we pitched in to insert a chain
through a slit cut in the flukes which were swung forward. Thither it was
brought alongside, floating just awash. Having joined our shipmates on
deck, we surveyed the inboards for damage, and found none other than
the external layer of copper plating, designed to retard marine growth.

By then it was rapidly nearing sunset. Luckily, we were spared a
grueling two to the ship. The whale was ours. But woe the cost, for the
sea was haunted with the ghosts of eleven of our men.

The dying rays of the setting sun turned the bloodstained sea into a
dark, shimmering rainbow of fire.

Before supper, our master (or “old man” as we referred to him among
ourselves) proffered a prayer in memory of our dead mates. It was
admittedly a harsh, dangerous, and often violent livelihood, he said, this
existence on the unforgiving sea, long and far from family and friends.

254 Phillip C. Heath

But whalemen were a proud and stubborn lot, and pointed out that it
was better for an old salt to be lost at sea caught up in the adventure that
was his life, than to languish on land and perhaps pass away in a
wretched sick-bed in some dismal, shuttered room. And for most of us
his words rang true. The old man was in his late thirties or thereabouts,
his face rugged yet aristocratic, and sporting an elegant beard. He had
signed aboard in his early teens as a lowly cabin boy and gradually
worked his way aft to the officer’s quarters.

Whilst we weary oarsmen stole a few hours of sleep that night, our
other crewmen finished arranging the equipment for the next two or
three days’ labor: processing the dead whale and rendering it into barrels
of oil. The cumbrous iron kettles were uncovered and cleaned, kindling
laid under them for when the blubber was ready to be boiled, and water
was poured in the brick trough on the floor beneath the tryworks, to
protect the wooden deck against the extreme temperatures.

In the early morning we were rousted into action: “All hands ahoy!
Tumble up and man the windlass! Nothin’ but arses ’n elbows this day,
maties!” So we each fell to our tasks with a will. We would toil around
the clock in six-hour shifts amid an inferno of soot and flame, transform¬
ing the Reaper into a miniature floating factory.

Upon closer inspection, we soon ascertained that the whale was as
peculiar physically as in its previous behavior toward the ship. It was not
mottled in color at all—as we had originally perceived—but was partially
covered with literally thousands of barnacles. Old battle scars, callouses,
sucker-fish, sea-lice, and barnacles were a common sight on just about
any whale, but to this degree was most extraordinary. Colonies of such
Crustacea were generally referred to by whalemen as “dead men’s
fingers,” either owing to the stalked, fingerlike appearance in which they
typically grew, or because of their rigid, deathlike grip.

At any rate, even though our former wind had lessened to a light
breeze, the ship carried only enough canvas to maintain slight headway,
to retard the vessel from drifting in circles and so the gentle forward
motion would act to hold the heavy carcass in close to her hull.

The twenty-foot cutting spades were taken from their racks and several
of the men set to flensing away huge blanket pieces of the foot-thick,
yellowish mantle of fat under the moderately thin outer skin, to be
impaled with a hook and hauled on board.

The old man and second mate kept a viligant eye on everything,
insuring that we sliced the blubber to the proper thickness, churned the
cauldrons habitually to prevent any settling on the bottom, and making
sure the blazing, sputtering fires were kept fueled to the highest intensity.

Dead Men's Fingers 255

t

If anyone was caught shirking in his duties he received a good dressing
down: “Show-a-leg there, buckos—this ain’t no widow’s walk!”

No regular meals were served, but rather we would take an occasional
break for a smoke and snack of blubber cracklin’s and biscuits dipped in
salt water and fried in the oil, or fritters of minced whale meat mixed
with potatoes.

The great number of barnacles proved to be a significant hindrance,
ofttimes making it nigh impossible to chop into or through them, thereby
frustrating our efforts to easily or practically get much of the blubber we
sought and repeatedly causing it to tear as it was stripped. The whale
was rolled over on its back and the mates wielded their spades with
surgical precision to sever the lower jawbone, providing ivory from its
colossal teeth. They managed to slash the massive vertebrae and decap¬
itate the beast, employing block and tackle to raise the giant head to deck
level near the gangway, so one of the hands could carefully dip out of
the natural reservoir therein containing hundreds of gallons of sper-
macetti, a fine oil highly esteemed by New England candlemakers.

It was not until after noon when I noticed that the mutilated whale
had attracted marauding sharks, as usual, but for some very strange
reason they were hesitant to approach the carcass too closely—as if they
were instinctively frightened of something. It was most puzzling. Yet this
was not nearly so mysterious as what occurred late that night, when three
of our men were killed in a singularly horrible manner.

The work progressed throughout the night, and by sunup dense clouds
of smoke still veiled the rigging, the decks gleaming darkly with blood
and grease, enormous masses of blubber scattered here and there. Oil
hissed and sizzled in the try-pots, and the entire ship was enveloped in
a cloying stench. During the night the listless breeze had virtually died
away altogether, the sails scarcely off the masts, and left us stranded in
a dead calm.

Sometime before noonday I was belowdecks assisting two other men
in placing casks of cooled oil into stowage. We were working toward the
bow, wrestling them to fill every nook and cranny. The hold was a
confining, gloomy place, imprisoning odd odors and shadows. Suddenly
one of the mates accidentally happened upon something behind several
displaced barrels in an obscure comer, and his eyes nearly popped out
of his head.

Stretched out in grotesque fashion were the corpses of three of our
erstwhile shipmates, unmissed from an earlier shift. They had been
ravaged beyond belief—barely recognizable for the men they once were.

256 Phillip C. Meath

One of my comrades tore his eyes from the sickening sight and peered
intently into the deeper darkness. “Listen,” he muttered, “—you hear
somethin’?” I hearkened closely and probed the shadows for some sound
or movement, but there was nothing stirring.

Anxious to get shy of these shuddersome surroundings, we forthwith
notified the old man, who summoned everyone out except for the second
mate. After much serious discussion and conjecture he had the sailmaker
sew up the bodies—or what was left of them—in some spare canvas, and
with quick, quiet ceremony conferred them to the ever-present sharks.

When evening came the Reaper drowsed sluggishly in the water, her
mast tops towering toward the stars, the sea as black as basalt and
smooth as glass. Only an occasional flying fish broke the surface, swiftly
gliding off into the night as if in fear.

Perhaps they sensed our own.

About an hour before sunrise, myself and a number of others were
awakened by a fearful howl from the second mate’s cabin. He came
lurching out, barefoot and clad only in trousers, holding one hand away
from him with his other. And then we discerned that there was something
round attached to the whole back part of his hand. Blood dribbled freely
betwixt his fingers and slowly ran down his arm.

“I—I was in my bunk,” he stammered, he stammered, his throat tight
with fear, “an’ I ’spect my arm was hanging out, touching the floor. I
woke up feeling an awful pricklin’, and found this—this thing on me.”

We examined the object carefully. Every now and again it quivered
slightly, as if securing itself more firmly in the mate’s hand. After several
moments it struck us as to why the thing seemed somewhat familiar ..
. it was one of the barnacles that thronged our dead whale. But barnacles
these obviously were not; just what they truly were, we had yet to learn.

The organism had plainly imbedded itself in the second mate’s flesh.
We endeavored to pull or pry it off, but the man winced and cried out in
pain, unable to endure it. Various other opinions and suggestions were
bandied about and tried in due course, such as applying heat to its shell
(which prompted it only to dig deeper), yet none of these methods
proved the least bit effective. Finally the old man took aside the chippy
and spoke for his ears only. Momentarily he returned and gravely
informed our second mate that it appeared the only solution to be quit
of the creature and to keep him from slowly bleeding to death was to
amputate his hand. This may have seemed a rather drastic measure, but
as a result of our vain attempts to remove the thing, and the victim’s
increasing torment and revulsion, the mate reluctantly agreed.

We plied him with the old man’s stoutest rum and ere long he lapsed

Dead Men's Fingers 257

into a deep, drunken stupor. Forasmuch as we boasted no surgeon or
formal doctor on board, the task was left to the butchery of the ship’s
cooper, or carpenter. When the deed was done the laceration was
cauterized with a red-hot iron till the bleeding stopped, so it could be
cleaned and dressed. He was carried back to his quarters to sleep it off.

The hand, still with its parasite, was then dropped into a burlap bag
and placed in one of the pots of bubbling oil for a long while. When the
creature was dead, the sack was discarded and the hand carved away
until only the creature remained. We huddled round and studied it in
detail.

It was comparatively small—that is, in relation to the others we had
noticed on the whale, ranging in size from a man’s fist to a large dinner
plate, and semi-spherical in shape. It reminded me of a horseshoe crab
without its tail. The shell was rough and incredibly resilient, thicker and
tougher than a tortoise shell. Someone tried to cut it with a short mincing
knife and could not. This chitinous mantle was strengthened by a lower
one-half inch band of movable, shelly plates, probably its means of
locomotion—a ring of ..rubbery cartilage from which sprouted sparse,
stubby growths of bristle or hair, mayhap some sort of sensory apparatus.
Despite the dense and rigid carapace of the creature it was remarkably
light in weight.

The underside mouth parts of the animal functioned as a piercing
organ, and our scrutiny disclosed a narrow but deep slit running length¬
wise which housed several rows of sharp, serrated teeth. Surrounding it
was moist, leathery tissue with what looked to be cement glands, and
dozens of tiny needlelike claws, each tipped with barbs. On this particular
specimen these could be extended as much as five centimeters and were
unquestionably the source of its tenacious clinging and boring abilities.

With a skitter of gooseflesh we surmised that this surely explained the
presumed rubbing motions of the whale against our hull, having been
driven mad with pain. I dare say the longer we pondered the dark
possibilities of this the more it seemed plausible. The sperm is primarily
a deepwater dweller; its predilection for giant squid, some four hundred
pounds and measuring five and fifty feet in length, lured them down
more than one-half mile to feed, their awesome under-teeth enabling
them to dislodge the squid from their rocky lairs at the bottom of the sea.

Even other whales, such as the slender gray, were known to have
surfaced after foraging with their heads and lips besmeared with a murky
ooze from the inky depths below. The faint sunlight would give way to
utter blackness, and in the unfathomed realm of an eternal night who
could guess what alien creatures lurked therein? There were all manner

258 Phillip C. Heath

of sea-floor scavengers, parasites, and suchlike; weird carnivores, prim¬
itive snails and other curiosities. The intestines of any whale might be
teeming with as many as twenty different kinds of pelagic worms. So it
was not improbable at all, then, that our stricken whale had perchance
been made host by these odious denizens of the deep, conceivable like
wandering through a nest of ticks or fleas.

In light of this revelation, and having stripped the whale of all we could
in spite of its myriad “barnacles,” we unchained the remains of our
hard-earned prize and cast the carcass adrift. But with a trickle of terror
we realized the tardiness of this action; for by this time the majority of
the creatures had left the dead animal and were now firmly fastened to
the bare wood of the vessel’s starboard hull, a large portion of the
protective copper sheathing having been tom off by the whale.

When another nightfall approached, an atmosphere of dread de¬
scended over the sullen ship like a funeral shroud.

The somber gray of dawn brought with it the discovery of two more
of our men, both half-eaten. It was appalling. One of the crew members
found them together on deck, under the midship shelter. It occurred to
us that it was strange that five of our companions had met this gruesome
end and yet no one heard an outcry or sounds of struggle. This happen¬
stance led us to suspect that the unfortunate wretches were suddenly
swarmed and helplessly covered with the creatures, or else perhaps some
of the things possessed the capability to poison or stun their victims
(possibly depending on their size or the area of the body whereto they
affixed themselves). Or, as in the case of the second mate, they were
clearly advantaged by his heavy slumber. Similarly, scuttling armies of
cockroaches—some as much as an inch and a half long—frequently
nibbled around the lips and beards of exhausted, sleeping sailors in quest
of food residues. It was an exceedingly unpleasant speculation.

We again disposed of the corpses, then the old man had us swab down
the decks with vinegar and salt water, and fumigate below with pans of
burning pitch. However, this was obviously a fruitless gesture, of which
we were all well aware, even the captain himself. A prodigious number
of the creatures had already infested the ship itself, and during the warm
daylight hours they apparently retreated to the dank shadows and more
remote parts of the ship, being basically nocturnal in nature and hitherto
accustomed to their twilight world beneath the sea.

In several such places we uncovered to our growing horror sticky
clusters of what could only be egg deposits, somewhat comparable to a
frog’s eggsacks. We destroyed those we were actually able to ferret out,
or dared to try. Moreover, a quick, tentative inspection of the hold

Dead Men's Fingers 259

revealed a new crisis at hand: the things’ rapacious appetites had
compelled those which remained attached to the hull to burrow them¬
selves deeply into the scantling, weakening the structure in spots and
causing the ship to slowly take on water.

The crew grew increasingly morose and fretful, and after midday
about half the men began milling together with renewed protests and
murmuring. The crew of the Reaper was a diverse and rather motley
collection: most were in their late teens, some, as I, were in their twenties,
and a few, such as the old man, in their thirties; we represented
numerous nationalities, including Spaniards, Swedes, Germans, Irish¬
men, Frenchmen, Italians, and a smattering of Pacific Islanders. And
from every walk of life we were—adventurous gentlemen, reckless
soldiers, discontented tradesmen; among us a failed Shakespearean
actor, a homesick farmboy, a bankrupt Philadelphia hardware clerk, and
even myself, a well-educated Kentuckian having given up on my profes¬
sion as a newspaper reporter in order to “see the world.”

Presently the gathering ambled to the afterhouse, something most
assuredly weighing on their minds, and converged toward the old man.
The ship’s helmsman, whom it was rumored was a British jailbird having
escaped from a penal colony in Australia, stepped forward to address the
captain. He was a brawny, bullying, “cock-o-the-walk,” but seemed to
hold strong influence over some of the others.

“We chaps wish to ’ave a word wi’ you, Cap’n,” he announced stonily.

The old man folded his arms and said nothing, waiting.

The other continued, “We been studyin’ this—predicament, and seein’
as ’ow we got no wind to make for land, think it would be best if we all
evacuate the ship—leave ’er to these mis’rable buggers.”

The old man paled at this, being more a challenge than appeal, and
swallowed hard. “I forbid it! This ship is under my command, as well as
her crew—and I say no.”

“She won’t be yours much longer,” the surly helmsman sneered,
“ ’tween the sea and those critters.”

“We can overcome them, somehow—we must. We cannot carry these
things with us to an inhabited port... you saw their eggs. They would
multiply tenfold, continue to adapt, spawn and spread to other vessels,
become a plague. Nor can we surrender the ship to them, leaving both
an uncertain fate. No, we must keep our wits about us, exterminate them,
and bide for a favorable wind. She will not founder if we can make good
her course and set-to somewhere safe for repairs. Besides, consider your
mates who have given their lives for the wealth in our hold. ’Twould be
a crime—nay, a sin—to forsake it.”

260 Phillip C. Heath

“And pray tell what bloody use is any lay to those poor blighters dead
since—eaten alive? or to us, about to join them?”

Several others piped in with raucous voices. The captain spotted his
second mate amongst them. “You too, man? You side with these mischief
makers?”

The second mate raised his already festering, bandaged stump. “Aye,
Capt’n. I would gladly give meself over to the mercy of the drink afore
I’d let those horrid devils touch me again.”

“But we would be weeks at sea. The nearest coast is bounded by
treacherous reefs and strong currents. Tis a hostile and uncivilized
region—a rugged mountain wilderness. No ship anchors there if they can
prevent it. There would be uncounted privations. Twould be lunacy,
plain and simple, and I shan’t allow it.”

The old man managed to retain his outward composure and a frail
facade of authority, but beneath his somewhat faltering speech I detected
that he could not avoid being swept up in the same undercurrent of
dismay washing over most of the crew. Our good captain, once God
Almighty of the quarter-deck, was quickly losing control of his men.

The group’s leader gave him one last, long, ugly, look—and absently
fondling his sheath-knife, I noticed—then turned and stormed off.
Hereupon the others likewise dispersed, still grumbling.

This aura of tense unrest lingered through the rest of the afternoon,
escalating fatefully just before sunset when the brooding silence was
shattered by a bloodcurdling scream from the galley. With a prick of
panic we rushed to its source and found the cookie shrieking in agony,
his eyes wide circles of fear. He was flailing his arms and clawing
mindlessly at one of the creatures—a very big one—which was feasting
on the side of his face. For a second we were all agog, smitten by the
horror of the spectacle, until the helmsman, whose chum he was, leapt
forward to seize the fiendish creature with both hands, and with all his
might wrenched it off of its victim. Tragically, in so doing the thing took
with it a third of the cook’s face, exposing raw white bone. His eyes rolled
up in the back of his head, his face dripping gore and his mouth gaping
open in shock. He fell to his knees, tottered a moment, then collapsed to
hit the floor with a ghastly sound. He twitched once or twice and lay still.

The monster had landed on its back a few feet away, and the enraged
helmsman grabbed a meat cleaver and viciously hacked at the underside
of the creature till it was quite dead. Just then we glimpsed another of
the things darting off into the scraps of the shadows, suggesting a
surprising mobility more akin to a crab or spider than a snail. Conversely,
they also moved slowly and silently, almost as if steathily stalking their

Dead Men's Fingers 261

prey, and could climb upon people or objects without at first being
perceived, especially at night.

During the whole of this disaster the old man stood frozen in the
background, drugged with the terror of it, saying and doing nothing. The
contemptuous helmsman shot him another withering glare, and coldly
brushed past him.

That evening the captain doubled the watch, delegating two of his
more faithful, older hands, and gave them specific instructions to alert
him straightaway if there were any signs of trouble from the disgruntled
crew members. The situation was deteriorating rapidly, and things began
to look bleak indeed.

Of late we had come to expect the worst, and the following morning
brought with it still more reason for our mounting consternation. We
found that the two guards were assaulted sometime during the wee hours
before light, and the half-dozen men who constituted the preceding day’s
assemblage had furtively jumped ship. Apparently the two on duty tried
to enforce the old man’s order, for one of them had been dealt a cruel
blow from behind with a belaying pin, killing him instantly, intentional
or no. The other was pretty bad off due to a dagger wound to the chest.
The fellow nearly bled to death and we had difficulty in keeping the
bleeding at check. He was more unconscious than not, and his recovery
seemed doubtful.

The conspirators left further evidence of their departure, inasmuch as
the two remaining whaleboats—in addition to the spare—had been
quietly but thoroughly sabotaged. Whether this malicious act was per¬
petrated to spite the old man or to thwart later probable charges of
mutiny and the gallows dance, I could not say for certain. Someone also
discovered our stores of victuals and fresh water had been ransacked, as
well as assorted and sundry articles pilfered from the supply lockers.

I felt the captain had painted an accurate picture of the ultimate futility
of abandoning ship in these waters, and had no doubt but that the
scoundrels would all perish long before ever they could gain safety;
notwithstanding, such was of little consolation in view of our own plight.
There was no practical means of combating these loathsome creatures
and they grew bolder day by day. Neither can we hope to mend one of
the boats and ourselves escape if needs be, for the carpenter was among
the recent victims, and obviously would have been unable to salvage the
boat anyway.

As if in further mockery, about three o’clock in the afternoon a light
but freshening westerly found us, after almost four days’ flat calm. But
of course now we were even more seriously undermanned, being just six

262 Phillip C. Heath

of us left, and hardly enough to operate the ship efficiently for any
prolonged period of time. I took it upon myself to hoist aloft the
appropriate distress flags.

We ate a meager meal at sunset, and by and by headed each to our
quarters—three of the hands to the forecastle, the old man to his cabin,
and I to the former first mate’s cabin which I had recently occupied at
the captain’s permission. I was about to retire for the evening when I
heard a muffled, broken moaning from the lazaret, where we had
situated the injured man. Procuring a taper, I proceeded to investigate.

When I peered inside, my stomach turned to ice, for the poor fellow
was on the floor verily covered with the creatures—all sizes—as they fell
to devouring him alive, moving hungrily about like so many maggots.
Inevitably they were lured by the scent of his blood, and now it was too
late. Powerless to avail him, I spun and fled, shamefully relieved we had
isolated him from the rest of us and shut off that particular section of the
vessel. Then I related my grisly discovery to the captain. He made no
reply, only sat staring at me blankly, eyes like drab marbles, his face
drawn, haggard, and very ashen. He looked as if he had aged fifty years.
I left him to his dark imaginings and hurried to my own room, where I
eventually managed to obtain a few hours of fitful, troubled sleep.

After the sun was well up the next day I warily ventured back to the
scene of the previous night’s horror, and found the man’s fresh white
skeleton, picked quite clean. Upon finishing their ghoulish feast the
creatures had, fortunately, vanished elsewhere. I disposed of the grim
remains over the side, then came to realize with a shudder that I was the
only one up and about. I went below, forward to the forecastle where
the other three hands were quartered.

It was dark and musty, as most of the hatches leading up to the light
and fresh air were battened down. I approached the doorway cautiously
and with a heightening sense of apprehension resolved not to enter the
compartment, but merely called out loudly to my mates. There was no
answer from within save for a tell-tale scurrying noise. I backed away,
noticing for the first time on the floor at my feet the multitudes of sluglike
tracks and slimy trails of bloody mucus extending off in all directions.

With skin suddenly acrawl, I retreated quickly and returned aft,
bringing myself up to the old man’s cabin door. Knocking repeatedly,
calling to him in a tone of growing alarm, he finally responded. He
sounded distracted, distant and hoarse, betraying a note of terrified
resignation beyond despair.

“Go away!” he croaked. “Leave me be.”

Dead Men's Fingers 263

“But sir,” said I, “you did not answer, and the others ...”

“I am fine,” he snapped, his voice rising to an angry tremor. “—Begone
with you!”

Confused and concerned, I withdrew to my cabin for the remainder
of the day, feeling increasingly helpless, a chilling and forlorn weight
upon my shoulders. Then, at about dusk, I was startled by the loud report
of a pistol from the old man’s stateroom, and frantically bolted through
the main cabin into his sleeping quarters. My shock was complete when
I found him on his berth, having just put a ball of lead through his brain.
Blood was everywhere and almost at once I detected a movement to my
right, turning so to encounter not one but several of the creatures
scuttling swiftly through his cabin toward where the dead man lay.

Fully fearing now for my own life, I fled to my cabin and thought
quickly. Doubtless these demons would soon be upon me as well, lest I
acted shrewdly and with haste. This room had no door, but rather a
makeshift curtain that could be drawn. With desperation bom of fear, I
struck on the idea of prying loose my bunk and positioned its frame and
pallet upright across the doorway. It was a thin and relatively flimsy
obstacle, though I pushed a heavy sea-chest against it for additional
support.

Wiping my brow of the perspiration there, like warm rivulets of fear,
I became painfully cognizant of how cramped and inadequate my refuge
was, and somehow cold as a crypt.

The night slowly ebbed away, merciless in its eternity. I am the lone
survivor of an entire crew of ablebodied men, and a hideous death creeps
on the other side of my temporary barricade. In these long, darkling
hours I have screwed up my courage and set to pondering as objectively
as possible my dire state of affairs, ever mindful of the fearsome skittering
and chewing sounds issuing from immediately outside my cabin. We
have inadvertently brought these accursed creatures up from the bottom
of the sea, and there appears to be no alternative but to send them back
whence they came. My plan is simple yet perilous. If, at dawn’s first light,
I can dash across the galley and the length of the steerage, and can hurl
a well-aimed, burning oil-lamp into the blubber room, the greasy try-
works will ignite instantly and bum fiercely, the conflagration hopefully
consuming everything on her before she goes down. And, saints willing,
I can escape speedily up through the main hatch and take some substan¬
tial jetsam overboard with me onto which I can cling.

Our first mate kept the ship’s log, and since his death the old man had
assigned me to keep the daily entries, my being learned of books. I have
been previously too preoccupied by the calamity of the past few days to

264 Phillip C. Heath

do so, but now bring everything to date, and leave this journal as both
witness and warning, in the event something goes awry. I pray no one
ever need find this, that I am successful in my mission and the Reaper is
consigned to her watery grave.

Alas, I feel the time has come. I go now, to do what must be done.

In his gloomy cabin aboard Jezebel, Captain Seabury finished reading
this last line of script and slowly closed the log. Morbid recollections of
the pitiful skeleton at the foot of the steerage companionway, with the
shattered oil-lamp beneath it, flickered ominously in the dark recesses
of his mind. And now he comprehended with dawning horror the full
implications of the strange account he had just read. The night had
almost slipped by, like a thief, unnoticed. In less than two hours it would
be daybreak, the men preparing to transfer the oil from the Reaper. He
was but a fool—damn the oil! Orders must be given immediately to torch
the nightmare ship and cast loose before it was too late.

All at once he heard a terrified scream from somewhere on board his
own ship, touching every inch of his body with fear. This was promptly
followed by another, and then he cleared the paralyzing fog in his head
long enough to realize that this second came from his own throat.

Indeed, for something large, wet, and cold was slowly crawling up his
leg

• • •

Dead Week

Leonard Carpenter

Born in Chicago in 1948, Leonard Carpenter grew up in the San
Francisco Bay Area and attended college at Berkeley—an experience
which furnished the background to “Dead Week .” Says Carpenter:
“There’s a certain pressurized intensity to student life, when we’re still
finding out whether we’re viable human beings or not, which all of us
share to some extent. It’s a time of great discovery and of great dread; I
hope the story conveys it. ”

“Dead Week” is Carpenter’s first professional sale, followed by “The
Ebbing” in Writers of the Future. Just now he is under contract to write
new Conan novels for Tor Books; his first two, Conan the Renegade and
Conan the Raider, have recently come out. Carpenter now lives with his
wife and twin daughters in Santa Maria, California. He hopes to make
writing a full-time career.

From 6:00 p.m. until 11:00 P.M., Cassy slept the sleep of the hunted. She
awoke still dressed, stiff and cold on her cot, and lay for a long time in
a semicomatose state watching the ghosts of car lights creep across the
ceiling.

Sleeping odd hours was a method she used to cope with her
roommates’ erratic study habits, and their taste for bluegrass music
played loud and long. Now the house below her was finally quiet. The
long night lay ahead for a last-ditch effort to prepare for finals next week.

Cassy couldn’t understand why no one else ever needed to study.
Between her full load of classes, the cafeteria job to supplement her
meager scholarship, and the lab requirements for the advanced biology
program, she had no time left. The endless talking, socializing, and
kicking back that the others engaged in were luxuries she couldn’t afford.
By accepting a steep increase in rent she had managed to get a room to
herself—not a room really, just a cramped vestibule atop the back
stairway, probably rented out in violation of fire regulations. But she
needed it to study in peace.

265

266 Leonard Carpenter

Her first task, the one she had been dreading, was to clean off her
desk. It was an unexplored drift of papers reflecting the disorder of her
own mind—books, lecture notes, handouts, reading lists, and who-knew-
what-else dumped there in moments of exhaustion during the semester.
Now she would need to review all her course requirements in order to
cram efficiently. She dragged herself up, switched on the naked bulb
overhead, plugged in her coffee pot, and went to work.

The job went faster than she expected. Most of the papers could be
arranged by course number and date or thrown away. The notes were
legible, if sparse, and she had really only fallen behind in her reading a
few weeks before—so maybe things weren’t so bad.

Then she found something. Near the bottom of the mess was a pink,
printed card with the hours and days of a week blocked out like a
calendar, bearing the motto “Courtesy of the Berkeley Student Book¬
store.” The card itself wasn’t strange—the times of Cass/s classes, labs,
and work shifts were sketched into it with the care of someone mapping
out a glorious new life, long before it turned into a murderous routine.

The strange thing was that on Tuesday and Thursday afternoons at
3:00 P.M.—right in the middle of her cherished library study time—were
penciled blocks labeled “Demo 168.”

It looked like her writing, but it puzzled her. She certainly wasn’t
taking any courses in demonology. Maybe it was demolitions—she
laughed, thinking that would make a good poli-sci course. On an impulse
she picked up her dog-eared schedule and directory and thumbed
through the alphabetical listings. There it was, in tiny computer print,
underscored in red pencil. “Demography Dept.—Demo 168—133
Dwindle Hall—TTh 3.”

Intrigued and a little disturbed, she plunged into the thick yellow
course catalog. “Demography 168. 3 units. The Limits of Population. An
exploration of the theoretical and practical limits to population growth,
with special emphasis on the roles of birth and death controls in restoring
equilibrium. Professors Thayer and Munck.”

Slowly, with the elusive quality of a dream, it came back to her. She
had indeed considered taking the course in February, nearly five months
before. She’d even attended one or two lectures. The subject had sounded
interesting—and relevant, she had thought, to the populations of mi¬
crobes she would be working with in bio. She’d heard that it was a smart
precaution to sign up for extra classes in case your first preferences were
too crowded.

But the professor had indicated that the course would focus on human

Dead Week 267

populations, using a social-science approach. That was the main reason
Cassy had dropped it.

At least she seemed to recall dropping it. She began hunting through
the desk drawers. There it was—the green carbon copy of the enrollment
card, signed by her faculty advisor. As she read it her heart plunged and
her fingertips felt numb. It listed five courses; the fifth one was Demo
168 .

But that was crazy! How could she be taking a course without even
knowing it? She was sure she hadn’t bought any of the texts—at some
point she must have just stopped attending and forgotten all about it.

Frantically she searched through the last of the clutter on the desktop.
A single sheet, mimeographed in pale purple, came to light. It read,
“Demography 168—Course Requirements. The grade will be based sixty
percent on the final exam and forty percent on the term paper, to be
handed in at the last class meeting. Lecture attendance is recommended.
Required reading: Man against the Ceiling by Storvich and Smith, Sutton
House, 1973; The Dynamics of Death Control by E. C. Festung, 1978 ed.;
Sower and Reaper by G. Hofstaedler, Vendome, 1979. Additional read¬
ings to be assigned periodically.”

Cassy felt a great, sinking despair. The chance of catching up so late
in the semester was nil. She would have to request some kind of
administrative relief. Whether it would affect her scholarship, she didn’t
know.

There was certainly nothing to be done so late at night—and no one
she could talk to. She tried to study for other classes, but thoughts of the
phantom class kept twisting through her brain. As the night dragged on
she accomplished nothing more. Sleep was unattainable.

The most upsetting thing was the realization of her own mental
lapse—somehow, under all the demands and stress, her mind had
slipped gears. Was it the first time? Would it be the last?

The Berkeley campus seemed deserted the following day as Cassy
walked to the Admin Building. Dead Week, students called it—week of
anguished repentance for thoughtless months of procrastination. The sky
was steely gray with the fog that can make San Francisco Bay summers
colder than its winters. Swishing sprinklers transected the lawns.

Cassy 1 s route passed Barrows Hall, the eight-story math building. She
involuntarily glanced at the demolished shrub where a grad student had
dived from the roof a few days before. He had been the second suicide
to choose the boxlike building this term, the fourth this school year. They
were keeping the roof doors locked now.

268 Leonard Carpenter

Sproul Hall loomed impassive on the left, seemingly built of sugar
cubes. The plaza wasn’t deserted—its bizarre bazaar never ceased. Two
die-hard disc throwers, a vagrant guitar player, a revivalist preacher
ranting to nobody, and an odd assortment of street people were all doing
their things. Cassy hurried through. Somehow the sight of the anony¬
mous social transactions taking place here only intensified her loneliness.

Cassy had friendships, of course—smooth working relationships with
the people in her major, her job, and her house. But she felt there was
some kind of sustenance she wasn’t getting. She knew that she didn’t fit
the conventional beauty standard; the schoolkid puns about “Gassy’s
chassis” had stopped being funny after her chassis became a little too
stout for most boys’ liking. And though she had definitely and finally
determined that she was not “pig-faced,” it was depressing to have to
remind herself of it each time she looked into a mirror.

Not that she wanted a delirious romance. Her schedule didn’t allow
for it. Summer loomed ahead, with two accelerated class sessions, more
hours at the cafeteria, and a visit or possibly two with her mom. She
would have liked to do more dating and partying, but lately the guys
who approached her always seemed a little slimy. “Let’s talk about you,”
they said; “Tell me about yourself’—willing to give only as much as they
absolutely had to. Their attention shifted too easily. The latest one,
Howie, had been that way. He had left a message for her a few weeks
ago, but she had forgotten to return his call.

Inside Sproul Hall there were long lines at the administration window
in spite of Dead Week—students fighting their bureaucratic battles to
the bitter end. No one in her line said anything to her; Cassy vainly
opened up her biochem text and stared at the chapter on protein
synthesis.

When her turn came she tried to explain her situation. The clerk, a
bored girl who looked younger than Cassy herself, pointed to an orange
bulletin under the glass countertop. “I’m sorry, the last day to add or
drop classes was March third.”

“But I never really took this class. I mean, I didn’t mean to!” She felt
herself getting in deeper. “I don’t need it... I only took it by mistake.”

“I’m sorry. The only way to drop now would be to withdraw from the
University.” The girl peered over Cass/s shoulder to summon the next
one in line.

“But that’s impossible ... my other classes. My scholarship! I want to
talk to someone else, please.”

“You could ask the instructor for a grade of Incomplete.”

“Please let me talk to someone else.”

Dead Week 269

“Very well, you’ll have to make an appointment to see the dean. His
office is on the second floor, in front of you as you leave the stairwell.
Next.”

After waiting in the dean’s anteroom and making an appointment for
the following day, Cassy didn’t have time to go home before her work
shift. Instead she went to the Graduate Social Sciences Library in Stevens
Hall. There, at the back of a yellow-lit aisle in the soundless stacks, she
was able to find one of the books on the Demo 168 reading list, the
Festung text. It was a hardcover maroon volume two inches thick, and
it looked as if no one had ever opened it. The glossy pages were densely
printed, with graphs of sociological data.

The chapter titles made it sound pretty heavy. “Nature’s Inexorable
Balance,” “Death Controls Versus Human Ingenuity,” “The Pathology of
Crowding,” “The Role of the Unconscious,” and so on. The graphs dealt
mainly with crime rates and deaths from various causes as functions of
population density, in an endless series of uptailing curves. The prose
was impenetrable—written in Berkeleyese, a pretentious academic style
that tries earnestly to make itself immune to all criticisms and ends up
qualifying itself into meaningless obscurity.

Typical social sciences material, Cassy thought. There was no hope of
making sense of it without the lectures and the teacher’s help, if she did
end up having to do the coursework.

That was one reason Cassy had majored in biology. It has no shortage
of cumbersome facts and figures to grapple with, but there was also the
laboratory work—real, concrete procedures that could show the truth or
untruth of the theories in solid, life-or-death terms. She was good in the
lab, and it was largely on the strength of this aptitude that she’d been
accepted into the advanced bio program.

Of course, it had put unexpected demands on her time and cut into
her other activities—but she didn’t mind. It made her feel good to be
valued as a researcher. Much of it was routine work and errand-girl
stuff—growing and feeding cultures, caring for test animals, and deliv¬
ering specimens—still, she was learning a great deal about immunology
research. Some of it was quite advanced; she suspected that the lab
programs were tied to defense—though her instructors would never
admit that, with the current sentiment on campus.

i

Returning home in a haze of fatigue, Cassy cut across the grassless
front lawn and climbed the porch steps of her house. It was a worn,
gaudily-painted Victorian perched on a roaring one-way street. The front

270 Leonard Carpenter

door stood open and an acrid smell drifted out. She headed down the
hall, past the communal kitchen, and heard voices raised.

“There she goes now.” It was an angry-sounding female, Vickie or
Connie, speaking from one of the rooms. An intense murmur interrupted
her, and then the voice shrilled, “Well, somebody’s got to tell the creep!”

Cassy turned as Dave’s tee-shirted figure, built square for soccer,
appeared in the kitchen doorway. His face was set grimly. “Cassy, come
here.” He jerked his head in the direction of the kitchen.

Cassy complied. Dave stepped back to reveal the room. The acrid smell
was heavier here, and the ceiling was smoke-stained. The blackened,
ill-scrubbed stove with scorched and blistered cabinets above it resem¬
bled an altar.

“We had the fire department here this morning, Cassy,” Dave said.
“After you left. Did you forget to turn off the burner?”

Cassy felt numb, confused. “Well, maybe ... I’m not sure ...”

“Sure she did.” Vickie, dressed in tight jeans and Dave’s sweatshirt,
came through the door that joined their room to the kitchen. “It was her
crap piled up on the stove that caught fire. If Bruce hadn’t smelt it, we
would’ve all burned to death in our sleep.” She thumped across the floor
in bare feet and confronted Cassy. “What’s with you anyway?”

“I’m sorry ...” Cassy had only a vague recollection of her hurried
breakfast of coffee, toast, and donuts. “I’ve been so busy lately...”

“Busy—jeez!” Vicki threw up her hands violently. “We could be dead
right now, and you’re busy!” She rolled her eyes ceilingward. “How do
we know you won’t do it again tomorrow? You sneak around here, and
never talk to anybody...”

Dave put a hand on her shoulder, gingerly. “Vickie, I think she gets
the idea.”

“Butt out, Dave.” Vickie twisted out from under his hand and went on,
“You stay up all night. You know, we can hear you moving around up
there. When you walk back and forth, it makes the whole house creak.”

Cassy reddened. “Well, that’s better than some of the things I’ve heard
coming from your room!” She turned and started down the hall.

Vickie ran out of the kitchen after her. “Bullshit! You almost burned
us alive! You leave your coffee grounds all over—and the weird stuff you
eat takes up most of the space in the fridge!”

Dave was physically restraining her. “That’s enough, Vick.”

“I don’t care,” she screamed. As Cassy started up the back stairs, Vickie
was yelling, “Why don’t you just move out!”

Next day Cassy sat in the office of Dean Moody while he thumbed

Dead Week 271

through her master file. Over his shoulder, visible through the Venetian
blind, the soaring ivory tower of the Campanile chimed out eleven
o’clock. He looked up and pinched his clean-shaven lips into a smile.

“Just an oversight, you say? Well, whatever the cause, I think we can
make an exception in view of your excellent academic record. It can be
written up as a late drop for health reasons. All that will be required are
the signatures of the instructor and your faculty advisor.” He took a card
from his desk drawer, filled it in partially, and handed it to her. “You can
turn it in at the window downstairs.”

Cassy had no difficulty getting the signature of her advisor. Professor
Langenschiedt. He was so busy between the affairs of the Medical Physics
Department and the Academic Senate that he scarcely listened to her
explanation before expressing every confidence in her good judgment,
signing the form, and hurrying her out.

The approval of the course instructor was another matter. Cassy had
some uneasiness about approaching him to tell him she’d lost interest in
his class. Every academician takes his job seriously; she didn’t really
suppose that he’d consider her case important enough to warrant with¬
holding his signature, but she anticipated an unpleasant encounter.

She had reconstructed a fairly clear mental picture of Professor Thayer
from the beginning of the term: tall, tweedy, with squared-off tortoise¬
shell glasses and gray hair sculptured around his brow. His lectures had
been dry and dispassionate, giving no hint of his general disposition.

She looked up his office number and went in search of it. Her quest
took her through the cavernous lobby of Dwindle Hall and into its dim,
labyrinthine recesses. In building the hall and adding Dwindle Annex,
the designers had violated some basic law of architectural geometry, or
else one of human perception. Angular corridors and half-flights of stairs
created baffling and often frightening missteps for those who ventured
inside. The sickly-brown light reflecting off the floor added to the eerie
effect. But after many detours and hesitations, Cassy found the indicated
door, number 1521, and knocked. “Come in!”

As she opened the door a flood of daylight came through, so that she
could see only the outline of the man behind the desk. The tall window
looked out on a tree-filled quadrangle, and the north wall opposite was
bright with sun.

Professor Thayer closed the book before him and motioned Cassy to
a chair. “Hello, Miss ... uh, I’m pleased to see you. Aren’t you in one of
my classes?”

“Well, yes I was ... I mean I am. That’s sort of what I needed to talk
to you about. I stopped going after the second lecture.”

272 Leonard Carpenter

“Why, that’s funny—I thought I’d seen you more than that. I recognize
your bangs.”

Cassy blushed. Although she had been busy all day formulating
excuses, they evaporated now. Cassy told him simply and truthfully what
had happened. There was something so reassuring in his manner that
she went into more detail that she had done with anyone, and she
finished with a lump in her throat. She took the drop card out of her
book bag and placed it on his desk.

Professor Thayer nodded at it, but didn’t seem in any hurry to sign.

“Tell me,” he asked, “how many units are you taking?”

“Fifteen. Besides your class, I mean.”

“That’s quite a load. You also work part-time?”

“Yes sir. At the Meals Facility. And my lab requirement is six hours a
week, but I usually spend more time than that.” Cassy didn’t mean to
sound abject, but somehow she didn’t feel like holding anything back.

“You must be under great stress. I can see how it might cause, uh, a
slip of the kind you describe.” He smiled. “Of course I’ll be glad to sign
your card.” But instead of reaching for it, the professor folded his arms,
leaned back in his chair, and began to profess.

“It’s a shame, in a way, that you couldn’t have taken my class. It would
have given you some insight into a problem that’s affecting you—and
affecting us all, whether we know it or not.

“The course deals with overpopulation. It’s been controversial in the
Demography Department, since it probably should be called a sociology
or population-ecology course instead; some of my colleagues don’t
approve of my taking what amounts to a moral stance, by saying just
how much population is too much. But since the class deals specifically
with human society, and most of the data are here, I’ve kept it in the
department.

“We explore the correlation of increased population density with all
the classes of effects—from high rents to disrupted living conditions,
stress, violent crime, suicide, et cetera. One of the key factors at work is
anomie —the insecure, faceless ‘lonely crowd’ feeling discussed by Durkh-
ein and Riesman. It’s hard to define an emotion like that scientifically,
but it’s easy to see its results; they fill the front pages of our newspa¬
pers—with gruesome statistics.” Professor Thayer prodded a fat green
softcover volume of census figures at the side of his desk, so that it
flopped shut of its own weight.

“Of course, when you’re discussing overpopulation, there’s no better
example of it than the student body of a large school like Berkeley. In
this case, the population pressure is artificial—resulting from the crush

Dead Week 273

of students to a favored institution—but it’s intense enough to develop
all the classic effects: high rents, crowded living conditions, the overload
of facilities, and above all, stress. An interesting microcosm.” Professor
Thayer gazed speculatively at Cassy for a moment, then resumed.

“The intriguing approach is to view all these social problems not just
as ill effects, but as attempts by a dynamic system to balance itself. Death
controls, in E. C. Festung’s phrase.

“When a population exceeds natural limits, it definitely will be re¬
duced—if not by birth control, then by death controls such as famine and
disease. The human species is uniquely fortunate in having the power to
choose—though we don’t seem to be using that power.

“Festung identified a wide range of behaviors peculiar to man as death
controls: war, terrorism, violent crime, transportation accidents, cult
suicides, nuclear ‘events’ ”—the professor drew imaginary brackets
around the word with two pairs of fingers—“all the unique disasters we
take for granted today. He maintains that they all stem from an instinct,
inborn in mankind far beneath the level of rational thought, to reduce a
population that, unconsciously, we perceive as too large. Like caged birds
in the five-and-dime pecking each other to death. In effect, crowding is
seen to induce irrational and aggressive behavior. A fascinating theory.”
This time his pause was punctuated by the sound of sparrows chirping
outside in the quad.

“Unfortunately, it all tends to sound very morbid. Many students can’t
work with it—too depressing. They’d rather just shrug it off, at least until
it becomes too big to ignore. Like so many contemporary issues, it’s a
hard one to face—I’ve seen some fine minds become paralyzed by a sort
of ecological despair.” He massaged his chin a moment. “In a way, your
little bout of forgetfulness parallels the attitude of all Western society
toward the population issue, ever since the time of Malthus. The initial
warnings were just too grim, so we thrust it away to the back of our
minds. Unfortunately that doesn’t alleviate the problem.”

The professor lapsed into silence and stared out the window for a
while, hands folded. Then he bestirred himself and looked at his watch.
“Oh my, I see I’ve run on for quite a while. You ended up taking my course
anyway—the special condensed version. Hope I didn’t bore you. Or
depress you. Here, I’ll sign this.”

In a few moments Cassy was being ushered out the door. She didn’t
regret having spent so long with Professor Thayer. He was cute, though
long-winded—and a lot of what he said sounded awfully unscientific.

Leaving Dwindle she headed for the lab. After that, home, to do some
serious cramming!

274 Leonard Carpenter

So Dead Week ended, if not quite happily, then at least hurriedly.
Although the menace of the phantom class was laid to rest, Cassy knew
that the distraction and delay had hurt her study effort—perhaps seri¬
ously. So she halved her sleep time and doubled her coffee intake to catch
up, and in a while agony faded to mere numbness. Perhaps it didn’t
matter anyway—she had always found that final grades bore no recog¬
nizable relationship to her effort of understanding.

To complicate matters, there was a flurry of last-minute activity at the
lab. An ill-timed biochemical breakthrough had Cassy making special
trips around the campus to deliver files and samples when she should
have been doing a dozen other things. In the department she sensed
excitement and an unspoken pressure to keep the matter quiet—if not
permanently, then at least until summer break, when the majority of the
students would have gone home and the chance of protest lessened.

On Wednesday the lunch crowd in the Meals Facility was only slightly
smaller than usual. A few of the diners moved with the sanctified air of
having finished their final exams; others carried stacks of books on their
trays and looked haggard. Cassy stood behind the counter doling out
portions of stew, chicken, and enchiladas.

A familiar face appeared in the customer line. “Hello, Professor
Thayer,” she said brightly.

“Why, hello, Cassy! Oh, that’s right—you told me you worked here,
didn’t you?” The professor put on a playfully pensive look. “Hmmm. I
wonder what’s good today.”

“Everyone’s having the Caesar salad,” said Cassy, smiling. “It ought to
be good—I helped make it.” She reached for a clean bowl and began to
dish up an especially generous helping.

At that moment she noticed the Erlenmayer flask right there before
her—from the lab. It was nearly empty of bacterial toxins, type K. It really
didn’t look much different from the salad dressing cruet—but that was
over on the table by her purse, and it was still full. Again that lightheaded
feeling, of gears slipping somewhere.

Cassy and the professor heard a tray crash and looked out across the
expanse of tables. Something was happening. A man near the window
lurched, fell across a table, and rolled to the floor. There were violent
movements elsewhere in the room, and out on the terrace.

Then the screaming began.

The Sneering

Ramsey Campbell

Ramsey Campbell has been a regular in The Year’s Best Horror Stories
since the first volume. Since his first book in 1964, a collection of
Lovecraftian stories entitled The Inhabitant of the Lake & Less Welcome
Tenants, Campbell has developed his own distinctive style of intensely
introspective horrorfiction. In recent years he has frightened readers with
novels (The Face That Must Die, Incarnate, Obsession), short story
collections Dark Companions, Cold Print, and as editor of anthologies
(Superhorror, New Terrors I and II).

Born in Liverpool on January 4,1946, Campbell now lives in Merseys¬
ide, where he continues to find unsuspected horrors in his native city.
Perhaps more than anyone else, Campbell represents the new generation
of horror writers who had paid their dues long before the recent boon in
the genre’s popularity. Campbell’s latest books include a novel from
Macmillan, The Hungry Moon; a collection of erotic horror stories from
Scream/Press, Scared Stiff; and a third of an original anthology from
Dark Harvest, Night Visions 3. He is currently at work on a new
supernatural novel, The Influence.

When they’d come home the house had looked unreal, dwarfed by the
stalks of the streetlamps, which were more than twice as tall as any of
the houses that were left. Even the pavement outside had shrunk,
chopped in half by the widened roadway. Beneath the blazing orange
light the house looked like cardboard, a doll’s house; the dark green
curtains were black now, as if charred. It didn’t look at all like his pride.
“Isn’t it nice and bright,” Emily had said.

Bright! Seen from a quarter of a mile away the lights were ruthlessly
dazzling: stark fluorescent stars pinned to the earth, floating in a swath
of cold-orange light watery as mist. Outside the house the light was at
least as bright as day; it was impossible to look at the searing lamps.

Jack lay in bed. The light had kept him awake again, seeping through
the curtains, accumulating thickly in the room. The curtains were open

275

276 Ramsey Campbell

now; he could see the lower stretch of a towering metal stalk, gleaming
in the July sunlight. Progress. He let out a short breath, a mirthless
comment. Progress was what mattered now, not people.

Not that the lights were the worst. There was the incessant jagged
chattering and slow howling of machinery: would they never finish the
roadworks? They’d finish a damn sight faster if they spent less time
idling, telling vulgar jokes, and drinking tea. And when the men had
sneaked off home there was still the traffic, roaring by past midnight,
past one o’clock, carrying the racket of passengers, shouting drunkenly
and singing—the drivers too, no doubt: they didn’t care, these people.
Once or twice he’d leapt out of bed to try to spot the numbers of the cars,
but Emily would say, “Oh, leave them. They’re only young people.”
Sometimes he thought she must walk about with her eyes shut.

The machinery was silent. It was Sunday. The day of rest, or so he’d
been brought up to believe. But all it meant now was an early start for
the cars, gathering speed on the half-mile approach to the motorway:
cars packed with ignorant parents and their ill-spoken children, hordes
of them from the nearby council estate. At least they would be dropping
their litter in the country, instead of outside his house.

He could hear them now, the cars, the constant whirring, racing past
only to make way for more. They sounded as if they were in the house.
Why couldn’t he hear Emily? She’d got up while he was asleep, tired out
by wakefulness. Was she making him a pot of tea? It seemed odd that
he couldn’t hear her.

Still, it was a wonder he could hear anything over the unmannerly din
of traffic. The noise had never been so loud before; it filled the house.
Suddenly, ominously, he realized why. The front door was open.

Struggling into his dressing-gown, he hurried to the window. Emily
was standing outside the shop across the road, peering through the
speckled window. She had forgotten it was Sunday.

Well, that was nothing to worry about. Anyone could forget what day
it was, with all this noise. It didn’t sound like Sunday. He’d best go and
meet Emily. It was dim in the pedestrian subway, her walk wasn’t always
steady now; she might fall. Besides, one never knew what hooligans
might be lurking down there.

He dressed hastily, dragging clothes over his limbs. Emily stood
hopefully outside the shop. He went downstairs rapidly but warily: his
balance wasn’t perfect these days. Beneath the hall table with its small
vase of flowers, an intruding ball of greasy paper had lodged. He poked
it out with one foot and kicked it before him. The road could have it back.

As he emerged he heard a man say, “Look at that stupid old cow.”

The Sneering 277

Two men were standing outside his gate. From the man’s coarse
speech he could tell they were from the estate. They were staring across
the road at Emily, almost blocking his view of her. She stood at the edge
of the pavement, at a break in the temporary metal fence, waiting for a
chance to cross. Her mind was wandering again.

He shoved the men aside. “Who are you frigging pushing?” demanded
the one who’d spoken—but Jack was standing on tiptoe at the edge of
the traffic, shouting, “Emily! Stay there! I’m coming! Emily!”

She couldn’t hear him. The traffic whipped his words away, repeatedly
shuttered him off from her. She stood, peering through a mist that stank
of petrol, she made timid advances at gaps in the traffic. She was wearing
her blue leaf-patterned dress; gusts from passing cars plucked at it. In
her fluttering dress she looked frail as a gray-haired child.

“Stay there, Emily!” He ran to the subway. Outside his gate the two
men gaped after him. He clattered down the steps and plunged into the
tunnel. The darkness blinded him for a moment, gleaming darkly with
graffiti; the chill of the tiled passage touched him. He hurried up the
steps on the far side, grabbing the metal rail to quicken his climb. But it
was too late. Emily had crossed to the middle of the roadway.

Calling her now would confuse her. There was a lull in the traffic, but
she stood on the long concrete island, regaining her breath. Cross now!
he willed her desperately. The two men were making to step onto the
road. They were going to help the stupid old cow, were they? He ran to
the gap in the metal fence. She didn’t need them.

She had left the island, and he was running to it, when he saw the car.
It came rushing around the curve toward Emily, its wide nose glittering
silver. “Emily, watch out!” he shouted.

She turned and stood, bewildered, in the roadway. The men had seen
the car; they retreated to the pavement, gesturing at Emily. “Get back!”
they shouted, overlapping, confusing.

He couldn’t reach her in time. The car rushed toward her. He saw the
driver in his expensive silver-painted frame: young, cocksure, aggressive,
well-groomed yet coarse as a workman’s hands—everything Jack hated,
that threatened him. He should have known it would be such a man that
would take Emily from him.

The driver saw Emily, dithering in his path. His sidewhiskered face
filled with the most vicious hatred Jack had ever seen. He wrenched at
the wheel. The car swooped round Emily, coiling her with a thick swelling
tentacle of dust. As she stood trembling, one back wheel thudded against
the curb outside the house. The car slewed across the roadway toward

278 Ramsey Campbell

a lamp-standard. Jack glimpsed the hate-filled face in the moment before
it became an explosion of blood and glass.

Emily was running aimlessly, frantically, as if her ankles were cuffed
together. She staggered dizzily and fell. She lay on the road, sobbing or
giggling. The two men went to her, but Jack pushed them away. “We
don’t want your help, thank you. Nor yours either,” he told the drivers
emerging from their halted cars. But he accepted Dr. Tumilty’s help,
when the doctor hurried over from glancing at the driver, for Emily was
beginning to tremble, and didn’t seem to recognize the house. More
drivers were gathering to stare at the crash. Soon Jack heard the
approaching raucous howl of the police. The only thought he could find
in his head was that they had to be deafening in order to shout everyone
else’s row down.

“What are you doing?”

“Just looking.”

She turned from the front-room window to smile at him. Looking at
what, for heaven’s sake? his frown demanded. “I like watching people
go by,” she said.

He could see no people: only the relentless cars, dashing harsh sunlight
at his house, flinging dust. Still, perhaps he should be grateful she could
look. It seemed the doctor had been right: she didn’t remember the
accident.

That had been a week ago. Luckily the doctor had seen it happen; the
police had questioned him. A policeman had interrogated Jack, but had
left Emily alone, calmed by a sedative. Jack was glad she hadn’t encoun¬
tered the policeman, his sarcastic deference full of innuendo: “Does your
wife take any drugs, sir? I suppose she doesn’t drink at all? She wouldn’t
be under treatment?” He’d stared about the house in envious contempt,
as if he had more right to be there than Jack—-just as the people from
the estate would, if they saw something different from their concrete
council houses.

The council— They provided such people with the homes they de¬
served, but not Jack and Emily, oh, no. They’d offered compensation for
the inconvenience of road-widening. Charity, that was all that was, and
he’d told them so. A new house was what he wanted, in an area as quiet
as this had used to be when he’d bought the house—and not near any
estates full of rowdies, either. That, or nothing.

Emily was standing up. He started from his reverie. “Where are you
going?

“Over to the shop to buy things.”

The Sneering 279

“It’s all right, I’ll go. What do you want?”

“Oh, I don’t know. I’ll see when I get there.”

“No, you stay here.” He was becoming desperate; he couldn’t tell her
why he was insisting. “Make me a list. There’s no need for you to go.”

“But I want to.” The rims of her eyes were trembling with tears.

“All right, all right. I’ll help you carry things.”

She smiled brightly. “I’ll get my other basket,” she said, and ran
upstairs a few steps before she had to slow.

He felt a terrible dry grief. This nervously vulnerable child had been
the woman he’d married. “I’ll look after you,” he’d used to say, “I’ll protect
you,” for he’d loved to see her turn her innocent trusting smile up to him.
For a while, when they’d discovered they could have no children, she
had become a woman, almost a stranger—neurotically irritable, jealous
of her introversion, unpredictably morose. But when he’d retired, the
child had possessed her again. He had been delighted, until her memory
had begun to fail. It was almost as though his love for the child in her
were wiping out the adult. His responsibility for her was heavier, more
demanding now.

That was why they had gone to the seaside while the road widened:
because the upheaval upset Emily, the glistening mud like ropes of dung
where the pavement had been. “Our house will still be here,” she’d said.
“They won’t have knocked that down”—not like the post office up the
road. Their months by the sea had cost the last of their savings, and when
they’d returned it was too late to accept the council’s offer of compensa¬
tion, even if he had intended to. But he mustn’t blame Emily.

“Here’s your basket. Won’t you feel silly carrying that? Come on, then,
before it gets too hot.”

As they reached the gate he took her arm. Sunlight piled on them; he
felt as though the clothes he wore were being ironed. Up the road, near
where the post office had been, a concrete lamp-standard lay on the new
roundabout, protruding rusty twisted roots. A drill yattered, a creaking
mechanical shovel hefted and dumped earth. Men stood about, stripped
to the waist, dark as foreigners. He pursed his lips in disapproval and
ushered Emily to the subway.

The tunnel was scattered with bottles and wrappings, like leavings in
a lair. The tiles of the walls were overgrown with a tangle of graffiti:
short white words drooled, red words were raw wounds, ragged-edged.
Another of the ceiling lights had been smashed; almost the whole of the
tunnel was dim, dimmed further by the blazing daylight beyond. Some¬
thing came rushing out of the dimness.

He pulled Emily back from the mouth of the tunnel. It must be a

280 Ramsey Campbell

cyclist—he’d seen them riding through, with no thought for anyone.
From the estate, no doubt, where they knew no better. But nobody
emerged from the dimness: nothing at all.

A wind, then, or something rolling down the steps on the far side. He
hurried Emily through the chill darkness; she almost stumbled. He didn’t
like the subway. It felt cold as a flooded cave, and the glimmering graffiti
seemed to waver like submarine plants: he mustn’t over-exert himself.
The sunlight leapt at him. There was nothing on the steps.

“Oh hello, Mrs. Thorpe,” the shopwoman said to Emily. “Are you
better?” Stupid woman. Jack chattered to her, so that she couldn’t disturb
his wife. “Have you got everything?” he kept asking Emily. He was
anxious to get back to the house, where she would be safe.

They descended the subway steps more slowly, laden now. The
passage was thickly dark against the dazzle beyond. “Let’s get through
quickly,” he said. The darkness closed around him, snug and chill; he
held Emily’s arm more firmly. Cars rumbled overhead. Dark entangled
colors shifted. The clatter of their hurry filled the tunnel with sharp
fluttering: that must be what he heard, but it sounded like someone
rushing toward them. Someone had almost reached them, brutally
overbearing in the dark. For a moment, amid the writhing colors and the
red filter of his panting hurry, Jack glimpsed a face. It was brief as
lightning: eyes gleaming with hatred, with threat.

Jack rested in the sunlight, gripping the metal rail. No wonder he had
glimpsed the face of the driver from the accident; he had almost panicked
then, too. And no wonder he’d panicked just now: suppose roughs had
waylaid Emily and himself down there? “I think we’ll use the shops on
this side in future,” he said.

Back in the house he felt ill at ease, somehow threatened. People stared
through the windows as if into cages. Were they what Emily liked
watching? The sounds of cars seemed too close, aggressively loud.

When the evening began to settle down. Jack suggested a walk. They
wouldn’t use the subway, for the pavements across the road glittered
with grit and glass. As he closed the gate carefully behind him a car
honked a warning at Emily: impertinence. He took her arm and led her
away from the road, into the suburb.

The sounds of the road fell behind. Trees stood in strips of grass laid
along the pavements; still leaves floated at the tips of twigs against a
calm green sky. He felt at home now. Cars sat placidly in driveways, cars
were gathering outside a few of the semi-detached houses; people sat or
stood talking in rooms. Did the people on the estate ever talk to each
other, or just watch television all day? he wondered, strolling.

The Sneering 281

They’d strolled for several streets when he saw the boys. There were
four of them, young teenagers—not that one could be sure these days,
with them all trying to act older than they should be. They were dressed
like pop singers: sloppily, not a suit among them. As they slouched they
tugged at garden hedges, stripping leaves from privet twigs. “Do you live
there?” Jack demanded. “Then just you stop that at once.”

“It’s not your house,” said one, a boy with a burst purple lip; he twisted
another twig loose.

“Go on. You just move along or you’ll get something you won’t forget.”

“Ooh, what?” the purple-lipped boy cried, pretending effeminacy.
They all began to jeer at Jack, dancing around him, dodging out of reach.
Emily stood by the hedge, bewildered. Jack held himself still, waiting for
one of them to come close; he could feel blood blazing in his face. “Go
on, you young ruffians. If I get hold of you—”

“What’ll you do? You’re not our father.”

“He’s too old,” one giggled.

Before Jack knew what was happening Emily leapt at the boy. She’d
pulled a pin from her hat; if the boy hadn’t flinched back the point would
have entered his cheek, or his eye. “Mad old bitch,” he shouted, retreat¬
ing. “My father’ll do you,” he called as the four ran off. “We know where
you live.”

Jack felt stretched red, pumped full of blood. “We’d better get home
now,” he said harshly, not looking at her. The dull giant pins of the
lamp-standards stood above the roofs, looming closer. The rough chorus
of cars grew louder.

A car snarled raggedly past the gate. As Jack started and glanced back,
he glimpsed movement in the subway. A pale rounded shape glimmered
in the dark mouth, like the tenant of a burrow: someone peering out,
framed by the muddle of graffiti. Up to no good. Jack thought dis¬
tractedly. Unlocking the front door, he glanced again at the subway; a
brief pale movement vanished. He turned back to the door, which had
slammed open as something—a stray wind—shouldered past him.

He sat in the front room. Now, until the streetlamps glared, the drawn
curtains were their own dark green. He could still feel his urgent startled
heartbeats. “You shouldn’t have flown at those boys,” he said. “That
wasn’t necessary.”

“I was defending you,” she said plaintively.

“I had control of the situation. You shouldn’t let these people make
you lose your dignity.”

“Well, you needn’t have spoken to them like that. They were only

282 Ramsey Campbell

young, they weren’t doing much harm. If you make them resentful they
only get into worse trouble.”

“Are you really so blind? These people don’t have any love for us, you
know. I wish you could see what they’ll do to this house after we’re gone.
They’ll be grown up by then, it’ll be their kind who’ll spoil what we’ve
made. And they’ll enjoy it, you mark my words.” He was saying too much,
but it was her fault, with her blind indulgence of the young—thank God,
they’d never had children. “You just watch these people,” he said. “You’ll
have them taking over the house before we’re gone.”

“They’re only young, it’s not their fault.” As though this were incon¬
testable proof, she said, “Like that poor young man who was killed.”

He gazed at her speechlessly. Yes, she meant the driver in the crash.
She sounded almost as if she were accusing Jack. All he could do was
nod: he couldn’t risk a retort when he didn’t know how much she
remembered.

The curtains blackened, soaked with orange light. Emily smiled at him
with the generosity of triumph. She parted the curtains and sat gazing
out. “I like it now it’s bright,” she said.

Eventually she went up to bed. He clashed the curtains together and
sat pondering somberly. All this harping on youth—almost as if she
wanted to remind him he had been unable to give her children. She
should have married one of the men from the estate. To judge from the
evidence, they spent half their time stuffing children into their wives.

No, that was unfair. She’d loved and wanted him, she still did. It was
Jack she wanted to hold her in bed. He felt ashamed. He’d go to her now.
He switched out the light, and the orange oozed in.

As he climbed the stairs he heard Emily moaning, in the grip of a
dream. The bedroom was full of dim orange twilight, pulsing with
passing lights. The bedclothes were so tangled by her writhing it was
impossible to decipher her body. “Emily. Emily,” he called. Her face
rolled on the pillow, turning up to him. A light flashed by. The dim
upturned face grinned viciously. It was a man’s face.

“You, you—” He grabbed blindly for the lightswitch. Emily’s face was
upturned on the pillow, eyes squeezed into wrinkles against the light,
lips quivering. That must be what the flash of light had shown him. “It’s
nothing, nothing. Go back to sleep,” he said sharply. But it was a long
time before he was able to join her, and sleep.

He had bought the house when he was sure they could have no
children. It had cost their old home and almost the whole of their savings.
It was meant to be a present for Emily, a consolation, but she hadn’t been

The Sneering 283

delighted: she had thought they should leave their savings to mature
with them, but property was an investment—not that he intended ever
to sell the house. They had argued coldly for weeks. He couldn’t bear
this new, logical, disillusioned Emily: he wanted to see delight fill her
eyes. At last he’d bought the house without telling her.

Unlocking the door, he had held his breath. She’d gazed about, and
in her eyes there had been only a sad helpless premonition that he’d done
the wrong thing. That had been worse than the day the doctor had told
him he was sterile. Yet over the years she’d come to love the house, to
care for it almost as if it were a child—until now. Now she did nothing
but gaze from the window.

She seemed content. She seldom left the house, except for the occa¬
sional evening stroll. He shopped alone. The scribbled subway was empty
of menace now. Once, returning from the shop, he saw Emily’s face intent
behind the shivering pane as a juggernaut thundered by. She looked
almost like a prisoner.

The imitation daylight fascinated her most—the orange faces glancing
at her, the orange flashes of the cars. Sometimes she fell asleep at the
window. He thought she was happy, but wasn’t sure; he couldn’t get past
the orange glint in her eyes.

She was turning her back on their home. Curls of dust gathered in
comers, the top of the stove looked charred; she never drew the curtains.
Her attitude depressed him. In an indefinable way, it felt as though
someone were sneering at the house.

When he tried to take over the housework, he felt sneered at: a grown
man on his hands and knees with a dustpan—imagine what the men
from the estate would say! But he mustn’t upset Emily; he didn’t know
how delicately her mind was balanced now. He swept the floor. His
depression stood over him, sneering.

It was as if an intruder were strolling through the house, staring at the
flaws, the shabbiness. The intruder stared at Emily, inert before the
window; at Jack, who gazed sadly at her as he pretended to read. So
much for their companionship. Didn’t she enjoy Jack’s company any¬
more? He couldn’t help not being as lively as he was once. Did she wish
he was as lively as the mob outside the window?

He couldn’t stand this. He was simply depressing himself with these
reveries. He could just make out Emily’s face, a faint orange mask in the
pane. “Come upstairs now,” he said gently.

His words hung before him, displaying their absurdity. The sneering
surrounded him as he took her arm. It was coarse, stupid, insensitive; it
jeered at them for going to bed only to sleep; but he couldn’t find words

284 Ramsey Campbell

to fend it off. He lay beside Emily, one arm about her frail waist; her dry
slim hand rested on his. It distressed him to feel how light her hand was.
The orange dimness sank over him, thick as depression, dragging him
down toward a dream of sleeping miserably alone.

It was all right. She was beside him. But something dark hung over
her. He squinted, trying to strain back the curdled dimness. It was a face;
curly black hair framed its vicious sneer. Jack leapt at it, punching. He
felt no impact, but the face burst like a balloon full of blood. The blood
faded swiftly as a firework’s star. He knew at once that he hadn’t got rid
of the face. It was still in the room.

His fist was thrust deep into the blankets. He awoke panting. He tried
to slow his heart with his breathing. The orange light hammered at his
eyes. He turned over, to hold Emily, to be sure he hadn’t disturbed her.
She was not there.

At once he knew she’d wandered out on the road. The sneering
surrounded him, still and watchful. He fumbled into his dressing-gown,
his feet groped for his slippers. He heard the rapid swish of cars. His head
was full of the thud of a body against metal, although he had heard no
such sound. He ran downstairs. He felt his mouth gaping like a letter-slot,
making a harsh sound of despair.

He stumbled down into the dark. He was rushing uncontrollably; he
almost fell. Parrallelograms of orange light lay stagnant inside the front
door. He scrabbled at the lock and bolts, and threw the door open.

The road was bare beneath the saucers of relentless light. Only a blur
of dust hung thinly above the surface. Perhaps she was in the subway.
His thoughts had fallen behind his headlong search. He had slammed
the gate out of his way before he realized she couldn’t have bolted the
door behind her.

He was awake now, in time. But he was still running, toward the snarl
of a car swinging around the curve. He tottered on the edge of the
pavement, then regained his balance. When he turned back to the house
he saw Emily gazing between the front-room curtains. The car sped
round the curve. Its light blinked in the window beside Emily: a pale
bright flash, an oval glimpse of light, a face, a sneering face.

He ran into the room. “Will you get away from there and come to bed!”
he shouted. His shock, his treacherous imagination, were rushing his
words out of control. “Why don’t you bring everyone into the garden if
you want to look at them? Bring them into the house?”

She turned and stared at him. For an awful moment he was sure she’d
forgotten who he was. “I’m Jack! I’m your husband!” but he couldn’t bear

The Sneering 285

to say it, to know. After a while she began to walk slowly, painfully
toward the stairs.

But perhaps she’d heard what he’d said. The next day several children
were playing football on the pavement, using the top of their subway
steps as a goal. “Don’t play there,” she shouted through the open window.
“You’ll get hurt.” They came to the hedge and pointed at her, laughing,
making faces. When she didn’t chase them, they ventured into the
garden. Before Jack could intervene she was chasing them wildly, as if
she thought the pavement was as wide as it used to be.

They were returning for another chase when he strode out. “If I see
you again I’ll get the police to you.” He glanced at Emily, and his stomach
flooded with raw dismay. Perhaps he was mistaken, but he was sure that
as the children had run out of the far end of the subway he’d glimpsed
in her eyes a look of longing.

Chasing the children had exhausted them both. She sat at the window;
he read. The day was thickly hot and stagnant, nothing moved except
the cars. He felt as though he were trapped in someone’s gaze.

“These children these days,” she said. “It isn’t their fault, it’s the way
they’re brought up. Do you know, some parents don’t want their children
at all.”

What was she trying to say? What was she sidling toward? He nodded,
gazing at the book.

“Did you see that little girl before, that we were chasing? She had such
a pretty face. It’s such a pity.”

Surely she wasn’t heading where he suspected, surely she knew better.
The heat held him limp and still.

“Don’t you think it’s up to people like us to help these children?” The
longing was clear now in her eyes. “The unwanted ones, I mean. We
could give them love. Some of them have never had any.”

“Love won’t feed them,” he told the book.

“But we could go without. We always buy the best meat, you know.
I’ve still a little money that I’ve saved from housekeeping.”

He hadn’t known that. Why didn’t she invest it? But he felt too
exhausted even to change the subject with that argument—exhausted,
and depressed: she wasn’t musing any longer, she was serious. “And we
don’t really need such a large house,” she said.

Before he could recover from this betrayal she said, “Don’t you think
it would be nice to bring up a little girl?”

She had never mentioned adoption before. Nor had he; the idea of a
strange child in his house had always seemed disturbing, threatening.

♦

286 Ramsey Campbell

Now there was a stronger reason why they couldn’t adopt a child: they
were too old. “We wouldn’t be able to,” he said.

“Why not?”

“Because we’re too old!” But when he met her bright, trusting, childlike
gaze, he couldn’t tell her. “Too much work. Too exhausting,” he said.

“Oh, I wouldn’t mind that. I could do it.” Every objection he made she
demolished. She had more experiences of life than most parents, she’d
been brought up decently herself, she would love the child more than its
own parents could, it would have a good home, they’d keep the child
away from bad company. All day she persisted, through dinner, into the
evening. Her eyes were moist and bright.

The orange light sank into the room, stifling. Emily’s words closed him
in. He was trapped, shaking his head at each point she made; he knew
he looked absurd. He mustn’t remind her they were old, near death. Why
must she persist? Couldn’t she see there was something he was trying
not to say? As he stared at the book, the orange light throbbed on his
eyes like blood. “We could sell the house, that would leave us some
money,” she said. “Wouldn’t you like a little girl?”

“No,” he blurted at the book. “No.”

“Oh, why not?”

His answer was too quick for him. “Because the authorities wouldn’t
let us have one,” he shouted, “you stupid old woman!”

Her face didn’t change. She turned away and sat forward, toward the
window. Her shoulders flinched as though a lash had cut them. “I didn’t
mean that. I’m sorry,” he said, but she only sat closer to the pane.

He must go to her, hold her—except that when he made to stand up
he felt intolerably fatuous. Every nuance of his apology echoed in his
head; it sounded like a bad actor’s worst line, he felt as if he were at the
mercy of an audience’s contempt. The sense of his own absurdity, more
relentless than the heat of the orange light, pushed him back into his
chair.

Emily leaned closer to the window. Suddenly he knew she was trying
to see her face in the glass. She went to the hall mirror. He saw her see
herself, her age, perhaps for the first time. Her face seemed to slump
inward. She walked past him without a glance and sat before the
window.

“Look here, I’m sorry.” He was whining, each word made him feel more
contemptible. Perhaps it was her contempt for him that he was feeling.
It gathered darkly on him, atrociously depressing.

He couldn’t comfort her while he felt like this. In fact, if it were his
own depression, it might be affecting her, too. He must go upstairs.

The Sneering 287

hoping she would heal by herself. Even to stand up was a struggle. She
sat still as he left the room, glancing back miserably at her.

Upstairs he felt a little better. At least he could close his eyes and clear
his mind. He lay limply in the heat; orange painted the dark within his
eyelids. Emily would get over it. She would have had to realize eventu¬
ally. He couldn’t think for her all the time, he shouted defensively. He
couldn’t protect her all her life. The orange glow didn’t contradict him.
It was soothing, empty, calm.

No, not entirely empty. Something was rushing toward him from deep
in the emptiness. As it came it breathed depression at him, thick as fumes.
It was rushing faster, it was on him. A face was pressed into his, bright
with hatred. Before he had time to flinch back, there was nothing—but
something was rushing toward him again; it thrust into his face for a
moment, grinning. Again. The face. The face. The face.

He woke. His hands were clenched on the sheets. The face was gone,
but for a moment, though depression muffled his thoughts, he knew why
it had been there. The man had been killed without warning; he meant
Jack to feel the sudden ruthless terror of death. And Jack did. He lay
inert and appalled.

All of a sudden, for no reason, his depression lifted—as if someone
standing over him had moved away. His mind brightened. He scoffed at
his dream. What nonsense, he had killed nobody. It took him a while to
wonder what Emily was doing.

He needn’t run. She would only be sitting at the window. But he fought
away the soothing of the orange calm and hurried to the stairs. Emily
was in the hall, at the front door. Her hand was on the lock.

“Where are you going?” She glanced up at the sound of his voice. As
she saw him her eyes filled with a mixture of disgust and fear. She pulled
the door open; orange light spilled over her.

“Emily, wait!” She was on the path. He ran downstairs, almost falling.
He was halfway down when the depression engulfed him like sluggish
muddy water. At once he knew that it was surrounding Emily, blinding
her to him. It had reached its intended victim.

She was running, a small helpless figure beneath the orange glare. The
light spoiled her blue dress, staining it patchily black. She was moving
headlong, as fast as the threat in his dream. She snatched the gate out
of her way. Amid the nocturnal chorus of the city, a car was approaching.

“Stay there, Emily!” Perhaps she heard him; something made her run
faster. The light throbbed, his eyes blurred. For a moment he saw
something perched on her shoulder, a dark thing as big as her head.

288 Ramsey Campbell

trembling and vague as heat. When he blinked his eyes clear, it had gone,
but he was sure it was still beside her. He was sure he knew its face.

She was on the roadway now, still running—not toward the far
pavement, but toward the speeding car. Jack was running too, although
he knew he couldn’t save her. She was determined to be killed. Even if
he caught her, their struggle would take them under the car.

But she mustn’t die alone, with the whisper of hatred and depression
at her ear. That death would be like his dream, but prolonged endlessly.
She must see that he was with her. He ran; the road and the lamp-stan¬
dards swayed; the orange light pounded, and his breath clawed at his
lungs. He had no chance of overtaking her. She wouldn’t see him.

Suddenly she slipped and fell. Jack ran faster, panting harshly; he felt
the pavement change to roadway underfoot. Perhaps he could drag her
out of the way—no, he could hear how fast the car was approaching. He
ran to her and cradled her in his arms. She seemed stunned by the pain
of her fall, but when her eyes opened he thought she saw him and smiled
weakly. He managed to smile, too, although he could feel a darkness
rushing toward them. Suddenly he wondered: since her tormentor had
stayed here, would they be tied here, too? Was this only the beginning
of their struggle?

He pressed her face into his chest to hide from her what was upon
them: the car, and the grinning face inflated with blood.

Bunny Didn't Tell Us

David J. Schow

David J. Schow was bom on July 13, 1955 in Marburg, West Ger¬
many—a German orphan adopted by American parents. His travels
eventually led him to Los Angeles, where he now lives. An avid film fan,
Schow claims to know more movie trivia than even Dennis Etchison.
Schow’s short fiction has appeared in Twilight Zone Magazine, Night
Cry, Weird Tales, Whispers, Fantasy Tales and elsewhere. He has been
a columnist for various publications and a contributing editor to film
books. His eight-part series on the television show, The Outer Limits,
written for Twilight Zone Magazine,/ormed the basis for his book, The
Outer Limits Omnibus, due from Berkley Books this autumn, Schow has
also written a dozen or so novelizations and series novels under at least
four pseudonyms—most recently a series of four novels based on
television’s Miami Vice, written under the byline Stephen Grave. Tor
Books has published his horror novel, The Kill Riff. Schow’s two previous
entries in The Year’s Best Horror Stories have ranged from mordant
whimsy (“One for the Horrors”) to gut-wrenching horror (“Coming Soon
to a Theatre Near You”). In “Bunny Didn’t Tell Us” Schow treats us to a
bit of graveyard humor.

The graverobbers worked as quickly and silently as they were able. It
began to rain lightly.

The fact sounded more like the opening line to a bad grade-school
joke, but the fact was that most of the embalming crew on the night shift
at Forest Lawn were tae kwon do freaks. They spent as much time
showing off new moves as they did tending the latest batch of customers,
and were so self-involved that they represented no threat at all. Ditto the
guards—they usually hated blundering about the vast cemetery in the
rain. Professionalism was one thing; superstition another.

Riff favored working in the rain no matter what the scam. Water
seemed to wash away both sentries and their willingness to pry, as well
as providing safe background noise for nocturnal endeavors.

289

290 David J. Schow

They were knee-deep in the hole. Riff gathered a clump of turf in one
hand and squinted at it as he crumbled it apart. Rain funneled in a steady
stream from the vee of his hat. “Recently tamped,” was all he said, wiping
his hand on his grimy topcoat. All around them the rainfall hissed into
the thick, manicured landscaping.

Mechanically, Riff jabbed his folding Army spade into the dirt,
stomped on the edge,and chucked the bladeful of earth over his shoulder
to the right. Klondike faced him in the hole, duplicating the moves one
half-beat later. Both had learned how to turn out a foxhole in Korea, and
in no time they were four feet down, then five.

Klondike’s spade was the first to thump against something solid and
hollow. “Bingo,” the larger man muttered.

Riff hesitated, then tossed back another gout of dirt anyway. Klondike
smelled like a wet bearskin, and his permanent facial shadow of black
beard stubble served to camouflage his face in the darkness. Riff did not
necessarily enjoy working with someone as coarse as Klondike, but all
his life he’d made a virtue of never questioning orders.

“Wait,” he said, and the big man froze like a pointer. Riff tapped the
surface beneath their feet with his spade. “Sounds funny.”

They knelt and swept away clots of dirt with their gloved hands.

“Time,” said Riff.

Klondike peeled back the cuff of his glove and read his luminous watch
face. “0345 hours,” he said. The fingertips of his gloves were stylishly
sawn off, and Klondike promptly used the moment of dead time to pick
his nose. “Ain’t got us much time,” he whispered. “Funk-hole’s turning
to mud.”

“I know that,” Riff said, hunkered down in the bottom of their
excavation and resisting the urge to add “you imbecile.” He plucked a
surgical pen-light from a coat pocket and cupped his palm around the
beam, leaning close. “Look at this.”

The dime-sized dot of light revealed a silver dent—left by Riffs
spade—in a smooth surface of brilliant, fire-engine red enamel. Klondike
ran his fingers over it, and stared dumbly at his hand while the tiny scar
in the otherwise flawless surface refilled with water.

“Bloody hell!” snapped Riff. “Bunny didn’t tell us that the guy was
buried in his goddamn car!”

Suddenly the drumming of rain on the exposed metal surface seemed
to become incriminatingly loud.

Riffs ties to Bunny Beaudine ran back to the middle 1970s, and a
half-witted punchline Bunny had fomented about finding employment
for needy military vets. A decade before, Bunny had been just another

Bunny Didn't Tell Us 291

seedy Sunset Boulevard pimp, chauffeuring his anemic, scabby stable of
trotters around in a creaking, third-hand Cadillac whose paint job was
eighty percent primer. Then Bunny discovered cocaine, and his future
turned to tinsel. Coke required bodyguards, and Bunny learned to be
Bad.

Riff suspected that Bunny got a kick out of two things: Hiring white
dudes to accomplish his dirty work, and vigorously dipping into his own
inventory for personal gratification, both the ladies and the face Drano.
His usual checklist of dumb jobs included low-power dope deliveries,
playing cabbie for the girls—Bunny now captained a fleet of Mercedes
from the cabin of his own Corsair limo—and the odd bit of mop-up. It
was a living.

Bunny’s strongarm boys packed magnums and broke bones with the
frequency Riff broke wind after a plate of lasagne. Once he’d taken that
first job for Bunny (a cash pass deliberately miscounted, as a test for Riffs
honesty). Riff understood that there was no shaking hands, no clean
leavetakings. Since he had no other prospects—1976 was a lousy job
year for vets—it was just as well.

Until this current assignment came along. Riff remembered how it had
gone down in Bunny’s Brentwood “office.”

Bunny had been laughing, flashing his ten-thousand-dollar teeth.
“Poor old Desmond,” he cackled. “Poor soul.”

Riff had gotten a phone call and had shown up precisely on the
half-hour. “What became of Desmond?” Desmond was one of Bunny’s
competitors. They cursed each other in private and slapped each other’s
shoulders, trading power handshakes, whenever anyone else was watch¬
ing.

Two of Bunny’s boys bellowed deep basso laughter from across the
room.

“Why, poor old Desmond somehow got his ass blowed off,” said
Bunny. “Terrible thing. You can’t even live in the city anymore ...”

The watchdogs stopped guffawing at a wave of Bunny’s hand. His
pinkie ring glittered and his broad-planed African face went dead serious.
Riff stood, arms folded, waiting for the show to end so business could
become relevant.

“What it is,” Bunny said to Riff, “is this. You remember Desmond, Riff,
my man?”

“I saw him a few times.”

“You remember all those rings and slave bracelets and shit he used to
wear all over his hands?”

“Yeah,” said Riff. “Mandarin fingernails, too.”

292 David J. Schow

“Them’s was for tooting. But you recall, right?” Bunny was nodding
up and down. So far so good. “One of them rings was a cut-down from
that diamond they called the Orb in the papers—stolen from that bitch
in Manhattan last year.”

‘The one married to the toilet-paper tycoon.” Riff knew the ring. It
was cut down, all right, but was still of vulgar size, and worth at least a
hundred grand.

“You got it. Well, here’s a little piece of trivia that nobody knows. Poor
old Desmond was buried wearing that ring.”

Riff was already beginning to get the picture. As with all pimps up
from gutter level, Desmond had insisted on burial as lavish as his lifestyle,
and in a boneyard as obscene as the diamond he’d hired stolen. Riff
looked back at the bodyguards. “Why didn’t you just have your goons
steal the ring after they blew the back of his head off?” he said, smiling.

Bunny kept his happy face on. “Why, there ain’t nobody in the world
would finger me; that was a accident, man,” he said, his voice sing-song
and full of bogus innocence. “Besides, we take the ring then, that means
Desmond’s boys be hunting it, and I don’t want to end this life in the
trunk of some Mexican’s Chevy being drug out of the ocean by the police.”
He pronounced it police. He shrugged. “But now—now, as far as
Desmond’s people are concerned, that rock is a permanent resident of
Forest Lawn, by the freeway. Ain’t nobody gonna miss it now.”

The goons chuckled on cue. Riff drew Klondike as an accomplice
mostly because the hulking halfwit was the wrong color to make it in the
world as a bodyguard for Bunny, but the bonus Bunny pushed in Riffs
direction erased any objections. The only hitch was that no amount of
cash could get Riff clear of Bunny now.

That was how Riffs adventure in the rain had begun.

“Shit!” Klondike beefed. “Asshole pimp six feet under in his
muthafuggin’ pimpmobile!”

“Watch your language,” said Riff. “And keep your voice down!” Slick
mud was beginning to join them in the hole, in force. He scooped out
the bilge with his hands.

“What kinda car is it?”

Who cares, thought Riff. Dumb question; dumb goon. “Just dig, before
we drown.” He wanted to find out if they were near a car window they
could break, to cut excavation time. They’d been putzing around on the
roof for nearly half an hour. Riff realized they were on top when he found
the insulated rectangle of the sunroof. The car was gigantic—maybe a

Bunny Didn't Tell Us 293

full-stretch limousine. He traced the outline of the sunroof with a finger
while Klondike continued to bail sludge from an awkward squat.

“Crowbar!” Riff said over his shoulder. Soon the horizon would turn
pink-gray with predawn light, and he mentally damned the end of
daylight savings time again.

Klondike poked his head out of the hole, did a quick three-sixty, and
returned with the crowbar. His own private mudslide was right behind

him. Things were getting gooey.

“All clear topside,” he said.

Not sure which side the sunroof opened from, Riff had a moment of
indecision, and that was when he heard the grinding noise. It was a low
whirring basso against the lighter sound of the pattering rain.

The sunroof was opening. Yellow cabin light sprayed upward from the

widening hatchway.

Things happened too fast for Riff to keep track. He fell backward onto
his rump in surprise, thinking, It’s one of Bunny’s goddamn tricks , god¬
damn Bunny it’s —

It seemed a funny thing to hear a big lug like Klondike screaming. His
voice spiked Riffs ears, cracking high with terror.

“Riff! It’s got my leg I can’t Riff help HELP ME —/”

And in the sickly glow of the limousine’s interior lights, Riff saw what
had ahold of Klondike’s leg.

The suit sleeve was crushed black velvet; the cuffs, ruffled lace. The
kind of overblown getup a showoff like Desmond would demand to be
buried in. The ebony claw dragging Klondike backward was threaded
with luminescent white mold. The brown jelly of rot glistened in the light,
and the dagger fingernails that were Desmond’s coke-snorting tools—
now jagged and cracked—gathered, seating themselves in Klondike’s left
calf.

Klondike hollered.

Riff was backed into the humid mound of turned earth. He might have
yelled, but his throat seemed stuffed up with grave dirt, and his tongue
hugged the roof of his mouth in fear.

There was nothing for Klondike to grab as an anchor, and the relentless
tow of the slime-clotted hand pulled him, wriggling, to block the light
from within the buried car. Another arm slid through the crack of space
and snaked around Klondike’s waist in a hideous bear-hug, from below.
Dense black mud was dripping down into the car as Klondike thrashed
to no gain against the dead, locked embrace.

Riff could still see, too well.

294 David J. Schow

The pressure increased. Gray knuckle bones popped through wet splits
in the decayed meat, and Klondike screamed one last time.

The sound of his back breaking apart was the splintering of dry
bamboo, the crunching of ice between the teeth. It cut off the screaming.
Then Klondike, all of him, began to fold into the hole in a way Riff had
never seen a human body bend before.

Riffs own body thawed enough to move, and one hand grasped the
spade. He took a single step closer.

Klondike’s body hung upward in a ludicrous bow-shape, feet and arms
in the night air. Something else in his body suddenly gave way with a
sharp, breaking-carrot noise, and he sagged a few inches farther down
into the sunroof.

Riff, trembling, raised the spade, blade down. Klondike was as dead
as a side of beef. Riff was not watching him so much as the moldering
hands that pulled him down. There, on the middle finger of one, was the
diamond.

When he lifted the spade to strike, the dark, oily mud greasing the roof
of the car skimmed his feet from beneath him, and he sprawled headlong
on top of what was left of Klondike.

Now Riff screamed, because the groping claw had locked around the
lapel of his topcoat three inches from his nose, pulling him inexorably
downward along with his inert partner. Klondike’s stale animal odor
stung Riffs nostrils for a fast instant before being washed away by the
eye-steaming stench of putrefaction. Riffs guts boiled and heaved. He
was sinking into the impossibly small sunroof.

He flailed; got his heel against the lip of the hole. Like a hungry spider,
the graveyard hand was making for his Adam’s apple, and he fought to
slow it down. When his fingers sank into the oleaginous dead flesh, he
killed the onrushing spasm of revulsion by jerking backward hard enough
to dislocate his shoulder.

He had a grip on the ring when he did it.

The thick, drenched tweed of the coat separated with a heavy pun-
drowned out by the rain. Riff plunged backward and wedged into the
rapidly dissolving dirt mound, shuddering uncontrollably, teeth clack¬
ing, completely apeshit with panic.

In the sickly yellow glow, he saw that the maggotty flesh of the ring
finger had stripped away like a rotten banana peel, exposing a still-
clutching skeleton finger. The sound it made against the red enamel was
like a fork tine raked against a porcelain sink.

Brown gunk was leaking from between his own fingers, and he opened
his fist to reveal a diamond almost as big as a golf ball, nestled in clumps

Bunny Didn't Tell Us 295

of buttery skin that was warm only because it had been inside Riffs closed
hand.

Riffs body would not move; he was frozen from the bowels down, his
back married to the pit wall. If he looked away, all he would see were
dancing, round-edged rectangles of yellow light.

Klondike’s chin was still perched on the edge of the sunroof. The
now-ringless hand in lace and black velvet circled his body and tugged.
Klondike’s upper row of teeth caught on the rubber insulation strip.
Another tug, and his forehead bonked against the hatch. Then the rest
of him slid into the hole all at once and was gone.

Riff was whimpering now, still cemented to the spot, transfixed by the
waiting yellow hole. He could just see the upper curve of one of the phony
electric braziers on either end of the front windows. Yellow squares
overlapped in his pupils; in his mind he saw a million times over the
rotting hand emerging again, grasping, pulling up a shoulder, revealing
a head and torso ...

“Here!” he yelled, his bones finally grinding into motion. “Here, God
damn it! Keep it! Bunny wanted it, not me! Take it back —/” He flung the
diamond without aiming. It bounced on the roof with a thunk, and
wandered toward the sunroof like a crystal BB in a Brobdinagian puzzle
maze.

It decided at last to drop in, and vanished, noiselessly.

Riffs treacherous body now insisted that he run, that he set an Olympic
record for running in the rain.

The sunroof began to whirr slowly shut, paring away the light. Riffs
heartbeat punched away at his throat. The last of the ooze in his hand
was rinsed away.

Then he piled out of the hole and hauled his poor white ass toward
the freeway at maximum speed. In forty-five minutes the rain changed
to a five-alarm downpour, and Riff stood in his own private puddle,
facing the singularly unamused gaze of Bunny.

“Turn him out,” said Bunny, flatly, and two of his boys winnowed
down to his waterlogged skivvies.

“I told you I don’t have the ring,” said Riff, still shivering. “But you’re
not going to believe that any more than you’ll believe that Klondike—”

“Pulled a doublecross, bashed you with a shovel, tied you up with your
own coat and took the diamond?” finished Bunny. His eyes bugged,
watery and yellow with sickle-cell. “Shit. Any one o’ them things,
maybe—but Klondike didn’t have enough battery power to invent all

296 David J. Schow

four. You’re jerking me around. Riff my friend. Maybe you didn’t even
make it out to the grave, huh?”

Riff swallowed. Bunny was getting ready to do something nasty.

“I’m not lying,” he said carefully. “Klondike is still at the gravesite.”

Anticipating Bunny’s next accusation, one of the hulks flanking the
doorway to the office stepped forward. “I know what you’re thinking,
boss,” he said in a voice as deep and growly as a diesel truck engine.
“That boy Desmond is as dead as one of them barbecued chickens in the
market. Me and Tango was a hundred percent sure.” He back-stepped to
his place at the door, and Riff thought of a cuckoo clock.

‘You took a hundred percent of my green,” said Bunny. “You better be
goddamn sure.” He said gah-dam.

“Can I have my pants back?” said Riff. Regrettably, it drew Bunny’s
pique away from his bulldogs and refocused it on himself.

“Give him his duds,” said Bunny. “He’s going out there with us.” He
rose to his buggywhip-skinny six-two and wired an expensive pair of
rose-tinted shades around his face. “And if you’re snowjobbin’ me, boy—”

“I know,” Riff nodded as he fought his way back into his sodden
clothing. “I’ll have a hard time peddling Veteran’s Day poppies wearing
a cast up to my eyebrows.”

“You got it.”

They made the drive in funereal silence, and nobody cared about the
dawn and the dirty floormop hue it turned the horizon. LA’s surface
streets were flooding by now, and the homeowners in the Hollywood
Hills would be cursing the mudslides, and it was obvious that visitor
business at Forest Lawn would be just... Well, thought Riff—they were
assured of no disturbances, anyway.

The gorilla named Tango broke out three umbrellas in basic black, and
nobody moved to share one with Riff, who led them down to Plot #60
from an access road charmingly called Magnolia View Terrace. It proved
a lot easier than sneaking up from the freeway. The heavily saturated
turf around Desmond’s final resting place made their shoes squish.
Bunny’s Gucci loafers were goners. Riff thought with not a little satisfac¬
tion.

Forest Lawn was discreet concerning such peccadilloes as vandalism.
No matter what happened to Desmond’s grave, the news would never
make the Times, and the wad of bills Tango had slapped into the
gatekeeper’s palm guaranteed privacy for proper mourning.

One of those characteristic Astroturf tarps had been pegged over the
hole. Desmond’s garish monument stone spired toward outer space like
a granite ICBM.

Bunny Didn't Tell Us 297

“So what?” Bunny said loudly as a jolt of thunder shook the ground.

“They covered it up!” said Riff.

All three men turned to look at him. “I can see that, null and void,”
Bunny snapped. “Get on with it!” The pimp stood with his hands deep
in the pockets of his black overcoat. Tango’s buddy holding an umbrella
over him like a dutiful Egyptian slave. Riff never could dredge up the
guy’s name—the two were as interchangeable as knife maniac movies—
so he pointed at Tango. “Help him,” Bunny said, and Tango eyed the tarp
doubtfully before stepping sidewise down into the pit. Bunny thought he
could hear a noise through the downpour, a kind of electric fly-buzzing.
Maybe construction equipment was working somewhere nearby.

Riff held up the comer of the tarp for Tango. There was a very dim
yellow glow emanating from beneath it, and water had pooled in its
middle, causing it to sag.

As Tango ducked under the tarp. Riff planted his foot dead bang into
the bigger man’s ass, driving him inside. The tarp flopped wetly back into
place. Tango’s partner saw it happen, and automatically broke his
revolver from its armpitholster, bringing it to bear on the bridge of Riffs
nose.

But by then. Tango had started screaming.

He shot up against the tarp from beneath, hurling water all over the
trio just as Bunny pointed to Riff and shouted, “Blow him away!” Then
he took a miscalculated step that dumped him onto his butt in the mud.

Riff grabbed the big magnum barrel just as it went off in his face. There
was a backward tug as the slug whizzed cleanly through the sleeve of his
overcoat. The pistolero’s second shot headed off into the stratosphere as
the slimed incline of the pit came apart like warm gelatin under his heels.
He slid indecorously down into Riffs embrace. As he flailed for balance.
Riff wrested the gun away and gave him a no-nonsense bash in the face
with it that flattened his nose to cartilaginous pulp and rolled his eyeballs
up into dreamtown.

It had taken maybe two seconds, total. Riff quickly climbed to the rim
of the grave. He knew how, by now. The gunman’s semiconscious body
oozed slowly downward until his legs were beneath the tarp edge. Then
he was pulled the rest of the way inside.

Topside, Bunny was still on his back, trying to scramble his own petite
shooting iron past the silver buttons on his double-breasted overcoat. He
looked up, glaring hotly, and saw a dripping, mud-caked bog monster
pointing an equally mud-caked revolver in his direction. His hands
stopped moving and his eyes became very white.

From behind Riff, there came a sound like a green tree branch being

298 David J. Schow

twisted in half, followed by nothing except the patter of the new rain.
One of the tent pegs popped loose and the tarp sagged into the hole.

Bunny’s face was a livid crimson-black with rage. The knowledge that
he had been outdrawn, however, did not stop him from trying to preserve
his image by saying, “I’ll kill your ass for this, you know,” in his quiet,
bad-pimp’s hiss.

“What it is. Bunny,” said Riff, gesturing with the gun, “is you need to
climb down into this hole.”

“Tango —/” Bunny screeched, trying to crawl backward.

Riff frowned and shot Bunny once, in the left leg just below the
kneecap. Blood mingled with the mud and gore spoiling his seven-hun-
dred-dollar suit. “This isn’t a movie. Bunny; just get in the hole.”

Hiding his pain behind clenched teeth. Bunny began to drag himself
toward the pit. When he backed down into it, on top of the tarp, his hands
going wrist-deep in the muck, he looked up at Riff and in his best
snake-charming voice said, “Why?” mostly to buy a couple of seconds
more. It was extra seconds that always counted in rescue time.

“Because I gotta change my life. Bunny,” he said, looming over him
with the gun.

Buy more seconds. “I’ll let you,” said Bunny, gasping now. “Anything
you want, man. Partners. We’ll—”

Riff was about to tell Bunny not to bullshit a bullshitter when the
ruglike tarp heaved mightily up, splitting in the middle. The first thing
that came out was yellow light. The second thing that came out was a
black velvet-clad arm that captured Bunny’s wounded leg in its trash
compactor grip very nicely. Bunny slid three more feet with a loud cry
of pain.

One thing about those limos. Riff thought as he turned away and
walked back up the slope. He’d noticed it during the ride out in Bunny’s
own chariot. They sure had a lot of room inside.

Bunny’s pocket pistol fired four, five times behind him and then
stopped.

Riff pawed around under the limousine’s bumper for the magnetic
case containing the spare keys, and when he got behind the wheel he
involuntarily glanced at the car’s sunroof. The two cars were probably a
lot alike.

He did not stick around to hear the tiny whirring noise coming from
Plot #60. Nor did he ever see the ridiculously fat diamond left at the
edge of the grave, as payment. A Forest Lawn worker, finding it later in
the day and assuming it to be a cheap crystal because of its large size,
took it to his Pasadena apartment and hung it in the kitchen window.

Finewood

Tanith Lee

Born in north London in September, 1947, Tanith Lee had her first
book, The Dragon Hoard, published fifteen years ago. Since that time she
has become one of the field’s most popular authors, with some thirty books
of fantasy and science fiction for adults and another ten or so for young
readers—this in addition to short stories, radio plays, and two scripts for
Blake’s Seven. Lee’s most recent books include a science fiction novel,
Days of Grass; a DAW Books reissue of two of her MacMillan novels, Dark
Castle, White Horse; a fourth novel in her Flat Earth series, Delirium’s
Mistress; and a collection of stories. Night’s Daughter. Just finished, a
major historical novel set during the French Revolution.

Clear morning light slanted across her face and woke her. She turned
on her side and murmured:

/

“David. David, darling, I think it must be awfully late—”

Receiving no answer, she opened her eyes. The other side of the bed
was empty, and the little clock on his side table showed half past ten. Of
course, he had woken when the alarm went off, as she never did, and
left her to sleep. The clock’s little round face, like cracked eggshell, ticked
with a menacing reproach. She had always been certain it disliked her,
in a humorous rather than a sinister manner, because she never re¬
sponded to its insistent morning screams, and when David was away on
business, forgot to wind it up.

Beyond the bright window the pines rubbed their black needles against
the autumn wind. She shivered as she sat up in the bed. The gothic trees
disturbed her, a stupid notion for a woman of thirty-seven, she told
herself.

Dear David. She brushed her teeth with swift meticulous strokes. He
alone had never minded about her sluggish waking.

She examined her eyes and her throat in the harsh light, bravely. Not
so bad. Not so bad, Pamela, for the elderly lady you are. She smiled as
she ran the bath, thinking of her anxious questionings, her painful jokes:

299

300 Tanith Lee

“I’m not too old for you, darling, really. People will ask you at parties
why you brought your mother—” in reality she was three years David’s
senior—and the batch of youthful snaps: “Oh, but I look so young in
these—” He was good to her, sensing the nervous, helpless steps she took
toward that essentially, prematurely female precipice of age—the little
line, the gray hair. He told her all the things she wanted to hear from
him, all the good things, and never seemed to find her tiresome. He had
always had a perfect patience and kindness toward her. And she had
always known that she had been unusually lucky with this man. She
might so easily have loved a fool or a boor and found out too late, as had
Jane, or her sister Angela, a man with no ability to imagine how things
might be for the female principal in his life—a lack of comprehension
amounting to xenophobia.

Sitting in the bath she had a sudden horror that this was the day for
Mrs. Meadowes, the cleaning lady. A twice-weekly visitation of utter
cleanliness and vigor, she nevertheless doted on David, and, naturally,
bullied Pamela. Frantically Pamela toweled and scattered talc. She never
seemed to know where she was with Mrs. Meadowes. Her days and times
of arrival seemed to be in constant flux. And now, come to think of it,
Pamela remembered she was to meet David for lunch.

She grasped the phone and dialed the Meadowes’ number. An inco¬
herent child answered, presently to be replaced by a recognized con¬
tralto.

“Oh—Mrs. Meadowes, Pamela Taylor here—I’m dreadfully sorry, but
I simply couldn’t remember—is it today you’re coming? Oris it tomorrow
or something?”

There was a pause, then the contralto said carefully:

“Well, dear, I can fit you in tomorrow. If you like.”

“Oh, good, then it wasn’t today. Thank you so much. Sorry to have
bothered you. Goodbye.”

There had been something distinctly strange about the Meadowes
phone call, she thought as she ate her grapefruit. Probably something to
do with that appalling child. She switched on the radio. She caught a
news bulletin, as she always seemed to do. Somewhere a plane had
crashed, somewhere else an earthquake—she switched off. Angela had
frequently told her that she should keep herself abreast of the news, not
bury her head in the sand. But she simply could not stand it. Papers
depressed her. They came for David,and when he forgot to take them
with him to the office as he always seemed to nowadays, she would push
them out of sight, bury them behind cushions and under piles of

Rnewood 301

magazines, afraid to glimpse some horror before she could avert her eyes.
David teased her a little. “Where’s the ostrich hidden my paper today?”

As she constructed her peach-bloom cosmetic face before the mirror
she thought of Angela, vigorously devouring black gospels of famine,
war, and pestilence with her morning coffee. James liked her to know
what she was talking about at their dinner parties. He rated a woman’s
intelligence by her grasp of foreign correspondents and yesterday in
parliament. It was in a way rather curious. Angela had met James in the
same month Pamela had met David.

She took the car with her into town, a feat she performed with some
dread. David was a superb and relaxed driver, she by contrast, sat in rigid
anxiety at the wheel. Her fears seemed to attract near disasters. Dogs,
children, and India rubber balls flew in front of her wheels as if magnet¬
ized, men in Citroens honked and swore, and juggernauts herded her off
the road. Normally she would take the bus, for David often used the car,
but today it lurked in the garage, taunting her, and besides she was
pushed for time. She reached the restaurant ten minutes late, and went
to meet him in the bar, but he had not yet arrived. Bars were unfortunate
for her, and alone she shunned them. David said she had a flair for being
picked up; men who looked mafioso would offer her martinis, and all
she seemed able to do in her paralyzed fright was apologize to them. She
left the bar and went into the restaurant and ordered a sherry at her
table.

The room felt rather hot and oppressive, and all the other tables were
filling up, except her own. She drank her sherry down in wild gulps and
the waiter leaned over her:

“Would madam care to order now?”

“Oh—no thank you. I’m sorry, you see, I’m waiting for my husband—”

She trailed off. A knowing and somber look had come over the man’s
face. “Oh, God, I suppose he thinks I’m a whore, too.” She took out a
cigarette and smoked it in nervous bursts. She could see another waiter
watching her from his post beside a pillar. “I shall wait another ten
minutes and then I shall go.”

It was fifteen minutes past two when she suddenly remembered. It
came over her like a lightning flash, bringing a wave of embarrassment
and relief in its wake. Of course, David had told her very last thing last
night that the lunch would have to be canceled. A man was coming from
Kelly’s—or Ryson’s—and he would have to take him for a working snack
at the pub. She felt an utter fool. Good heavens, was her memory going
this early? She almost giggled as she threaded between the tables.

She shopped in the afternoon, and ate a cream cake with her coffee

302 Tanith Lee

in a small teashop full of old ladies. She had bought David a novel, one
of the few Graham Greene’s he hadn’t collected over the years. She had
seen for some time that he was having trouble with his present reading—
the same volume had lain beside the round-faced clock for over a month.

The journey home was relatively uneventful. At the traffic lights a boy
with a rucksack leaned to her window. She thought in alarm that he was
going to demand a lift, or else tell her in an American voice of how he
had found Jesus in San Francisco, but, in fact, he only wanted directions
to Brown’s the chemists. It seemed such a harmless request it filled her
with incongruous delight. Purple and ocher cloud drift was bringing on
the early dusk in spasms of rain. With a surge of immeasurable compas¬
sion she offered him, after all, the lift she had been terrified of giving.
David would be furious with her, she knew. It was a stupid thing to do,
yet the boy looked so vulnerable in the rain, his long dark hair plastered
to his skull. He was an ugly, shy, rather charming student, and she left
him at the chemists after a ten-minute ride during which he thanked her
seven times. It turned out his mother was Mrs. Brown, and he had hitched
all the way from Bristol.

After he had gone, she parked the car, and went to buy fresh cigarettes.
Coming from the tobacconists, she saw the cemetery.

She had forgotten she would see the cemetery on her errand of mercy.
It was foolish, she knew, to experience this “morbid dread,” as Angela
would no doubt put it. It was, nevertheless, a perfect picture of horror
for her—the ranks of marble markers under the orange monochrome sky
with rain falling on their plots and withered wreaths, and down through
the newly-turned soil to reach the wooden caskets underneath.... She
experienced a sudden swirling sickness, and ran through it to the car.
Inside, the icy rain shut out, she found that she had absurdly begun to
cry.

“Oh, don’t be such an idiot,” she said aloud.

She turned on the car’s heater, and started vigorously for home, nearly
stalling. She was much later than she had meant to be.

There were no lights burning in the house, and she realized with regret
that he would be late again. She coerced the unwilling car into the
garage, and ran between the rustling pines. She clicked a switch in every
room and resuscitated the television to reveal three children up to their
eyes in some form of super sweet. Their strawberry-and-cream bedecked
faces filled her with disgust. She had never liked children, and never
wanted them. She paused, her hand on the door, a moment’s abstracted
thought catching at her mind—had she failed David in this? She could
remember him saying to her as she sobbed against him:

Pine wood 303

“I only want you, you know that, and nothing else matters.”

That had been after the results of the tests. In a way she felt she had
wished herself into barrenness. She thought of Angela’s two sons,
strapping boisterous boys, who went canoeing with their father, and
brought home baskets of mangled catch from a day’s fishing, and spotted
trains, and bolted their food to get back to incongruous and noisy
activities in their bedroom.

“A man needs sons,” Angela had once said. “It’s a sort of proof, Pamela.
Why don’t you see a specialist? I can give you the address.”

But then Angela and James had not slept together in any sense for ten
years, Pamela thought with sudden, spiteful triumph, and it had always
been a doubtful joy to them. She remembered David’s arms about her
and that earthy magic they made between them, an attraction that had
increased rather than diminished.

The phone rang.

It made her jump.

“Oh, damn.”

She picked it up, and heard, with the relevance of a conjuration, her
sister’s cool, well-managed tones.

“Oh, hullo, Angela. I don’t want to be a cow, but this really is rather
a bad time—I was just about to start dinner—”

“Pamela, my dear,” Angela said, her voice peculiarly solemn, “are you
all right?”

“All right? Of course I am. What on earth—”

“Pamela, I want you to listen to me. Please, my dear. I wouldn’t have
rung, but Jane Thomson says she saw you in Cordells at lunch time. She
says, oh, my dear, she says she saw you waiting for someone.” Angela

sounded unspeakably distressed. “Pamela, who were you waiting for?”

Pamela felt a surge of panic wash over her.

“I—oh, no one. Does it matter?”

“Darling, of course it does. Was it David you were waiting for, like the
last time?”

Pamela held the phone away from her ear and looked at it. There was
a bee trapped in the phone, buzzing away at her. She had always been
terribly afraid of bees.

“I really have to go, Angela,” she shouted at the mouthpiece.

“Oh, Pamela, Pamela,” Angela said. She seemed to be crying. “Darling,
David can’t come back to you. Now now.”

“Be quiet,” Pamela said.

The bee went on buzzing.

304 Tanith Lee

“Pamela, listen to me. David is dead. Dead, do you hear me? He died
of peritonitis last July. For God’s sake, Pamela—”

Pamela dropped the phone into its receiver and the buzzing stopped.

The dinner was spoiled before she realized how late he was going to
be after all. He had told her the conference might run on, and not to wait
up for him. She waited, however, until midnight. Upstairs, she took the
book from the bedside table and replaced it with the Graham Greene—it
would surprise him when he found it.

She hated to sleep without him, but she was very tired. And she would
see him in the morning.

Outside, the pines clicked and whispered, but she did not listen.

The Night People

Michael Reaves

Born in 1950 in San Bernardino, California, Michael Reaves currently
resides in Woodland Hills (close enough to Los Angeles to commute and
far enough to avoid the smog). He attended Clarion in 1972 and made
his first sale to Clarion III. Since then Reaves has sold a dozen or so short
stories to places like Twilight Zone Magazine and Fantasy & Science
Fiction— as well as ten novels, including Darkworld Detective, The
Shattered World, and Hellstar (the last with Steve Perry). This is in
addition to well over a hundred teleplays—mostly Saturday morning
animations—but including scripts for such shows as The Twilight Zone.
His latest books are “a fantasy noir called Street Magic”yrom Tor and a
sequel to The Shattered World. Reaves and rising fantasy star Steve Perry
are also working on a film for Catalina Productions called The Omega
Cage, based on their forthcoming novel.

Things had not changed that much. I found a basement single in one of
those old brick-and-black-iron buildings downtown, just off Evangeline,
near the Underground City. It was $275 a month for two rooms, a
Murphy bed, and a refrigerator that rattled like a snake. There were only
three wall outlets and most of the windows were painted shut, but it also
had a tiny fold-down desk, a built-in bookshelf, and space for an easel.
The whole place was very small, but that did not matter.

It was not a quiet building; there were children, and the landlady in
the apartment upstairs communed with God regularly and enthusiasti¬
cally. That didn’t matter either. I bought a stereo cassette player with
headphones and wore soft-wax earplugs when I slept, which was often
past noon. I had realized at least one lifelong, though minor, desire: after
years of rising at dawn, I was now staying up as late as three or four A.M.
I had become a night person.

I adjusted to it surprisingly easily. When I awoke, I would exercise; a
garage sale had provided me with a bench and some weights. I found an
old mailbag in a trash bin behind the post office, filled it with rags and

305

306 Michael Reaves

beans and rice, and hung it from one of the many water pipes that
crisscrossed the ceiling. I would beat on it regularly; I had no particular
skill, but it helped, along with pushing weights, to discharge some of the
tension that had built up during the past few months. The pipes were
also very useful for chin-ups and vertical sit-ups. After an hour or so of
that, I would paint—as much as ten hours straight sometimes except for
meals. To save money I made an easel and mixed my own pigments in
the sunlit alley behind the building.

Despite extensive use of drop clothes, flecks of paint stippled the walls
and the old hardwood floors, and the kitchen sink was soon stained with
a dark rainbow. I opened what windows I could and bought an ancient,
clattering fan, but the pungent smells of paint, thinner, and linseed oil
were still almost overpowering. I lived in dread of a surprise visit from
the landlady, who already viewed me with suspicion due to the Justin
Courtenay prints I had hung on one wall. There were two of them: The
Night People and Eros Exotica, his most famous works. The former’s street
scene alone, with its Bosch-like decadence and surreal evil, must have
immediately labeled me in her mind as a devil worshipper, and as for
the latter—I’m surprised she did not attempt to have me evicted.

When my vision would blur from eyestrain and fumes, I would go out.
Sometimes I would sit at a tiny wrought-iron table in one of the jazz clubs
on King Snake Road, nursing a drink and listening to horns scorching
the blue air; mostly I would just wander the streets and watch the colorful
pirate parade of night life. Like a vampire, I now seemed to feel fully
alive only after dark. I visited my old neighborhoods and haunted,
reliving scenes from my childhood that had faded to sere daguerreotypes
from memory. I tried to feel something, anything, and couldn’t.

I was back in New Delphi, the city where I’d been bom. But I wasn’t
home.

It had been ten years, not counting two visits to my parents after they
had moved to Blessed Shoals. I had long since lost touch with those few
friends I had made in high school and four years of art school. Perhaps,
I told myself, I would look them up. There was no hurry—we tend to
think of people left behind as being frozen in time’s ice, waiting patient
and unchanged. Perhaps I would see them eventually. But for now there
was to be nothing but work.

Samantha had been a night person; the times we retired together in
Los Angeles had been rare. I was always asleep by twelve at the latest,
while she rarely closed her eyes before four A.M. A few times we would

The Might People 307

pass each other in that gray, still time just before dawn—she on her way
to bed, I to put in a few hours at the light board before hitting the gym.

Maybe the difference in our circadian rhythms was a sign of basic
incompatibility. I should have heeded from the beginning, but initially,
in fact, I found it charming. I envied Samantha; I had always longed to
be a night person, had always thought it a badge of creativity. Many of
our friends were writers, artists, or musicians, and did most of their work
in those quiet, neon-lit hours.

But to me the land that lay beyond midnight was an immense terra
incognita. I had forced myself to stay awake all night a number of times,
and each had left me feeling like the walking dead for days afterward.
At last I had accepted my diurnal nature; regretfully, for I viewed the
night as a separate, magical world, and longed to be part of it. I never
felt quite right about working to the prosaic sounds of car engines
warming and garbage cans rattling, rather than to a mysterious romantic
silence broken only by an occasional siren or police helicopter.

In one respect, the split shift that Samantha and I lived was advanta¬
geous; we could only afford a two bedroom apartment, which meant that
one room had to serve as both her office and my studio. I think that, had
we labored in that small area at the same time, what happened between
us would have happened much sooner. We were both at the same stage
in our careers; I had sold several paintings and lithographs and been
shown in some of the trendier galleries along Melrose Avenue, while she
had placed a dozen short stories in small-press magazines and antholo¬
gies and was working on a novel. We supported ourselves by freelancing
for animation studios which produced children’s cartoons for Saturday
morning television. She wrote the scripts and I drew the storyboards. It
paid very well; three months’ work let us spend the rest of the year on
our own labors of love.

I met Samantha by calling to compliment her on a script she had
written, one which I was boarding. Six months later we were living
together; exactly one year after that, to the day, I left Los Angeles.

Samantha and I had become lovers before we had become friends, and
only later discovered that, despite appearances, we had nothing in
common. There was a gulf between us that was far wider, far deeper,
than the difference between day and night. Looking too long and too
deeply into that gulf—that, and not the petty bourgeois bickering we had
constantly engaged in, had been our mistake. It had driven me away from
Los Angeles, which, despite its night life, is a city of harsh brightness, a
land where people drive miles beneath a desert sun to visit tanning

308 Michael Reaves

parlors. It had brought me back to New Delphi, the epitome of the Deep
South, a true city of night, surrounded by pre-Cambrian bayous. Magic
still lived here, and here I could, I hoped, put down on canvas what I had
left behind, before it was too late.

I had been there nearly a month when I turned thirty. No doubt in
reaction, I rose early and worked out long and hard that day, beating the
bag, jumping rope and lifting weights until every joint and muscle ached
and the windows were fogged. My usual schedule was to follow this with
a blenderful of fruit, brewer’s yeast, protein powder, and bran, and then
to start mixing colors. Instead, I took a walk.

It was a bright spring day, the air already hinting at the approaching
summer warmth and humidity. I thought briefly about how intolerable
my rabbit-hole would be and how it would affect the painting if I did not
somehow find the money for an air conditioner. I think it was the first
time I had let my thoughts venture more than a week into the future
since I had moved.

The crowds seemed larger and slower-moving. Though full of variety,
they were drab compared to the perennial Mardi Gras ensemble that
filled the streets after dark. There were more cars with out-of-state plates;
tourist season was beginning.

I had not been outside before dusk in nearly two weeks. The afternoon
sun was giving me a headache, despite the mirrored sunglasses I wore.
I decided suddenly to take the Underground City tour. It had been nearly
fifteen years since I had last seen it, but I remembered it very well. The
thought of the cool, damp brick streets, the deserted storefronts and
houses spotlighted by lightbulbs, and most of all the quiet, was very
appealing. I bought a ticket and joined the tour group that was already
descending the concrete steps.

The tour was composed mostly of fat men in loud shirts and hats
advertising beer brands or truck companies, and women whose purpose
in life was to bat futilely at crying children. I walked slowly, dropping
behind them all, paying no attention to the tour guide’s cheery speech
about the Thanksgiving Day Battle of 1864 in which Union soldiers had
put the entire downtown area to the torch. New buildings had eventually
been built on top of the old, leaving the fire-gutted ruins to molder in
darkness until the city fathers had decided in 1957 to restore them as a
tourist attraction.

I was surprised at how accurately I remembered it; particularly
Alastair Street, the infamous artists’ colony. Even as a child I had been
fascinated with its history. Here such authors as Bierce, Brochensen,

The Might People 309

Dedric, and even Poe had lived or visited in antebellum times. In 1849,
while living in a small garret overlooking the square, Mamauk had
composed The Executioner’s Daughter, an opera considered at the time
so savagely perverse that there had been talk of deporting him. It was in
his Alastair Studio that Courtenay had painted his two most controversial
works, and also such masterpieces as Images in Stone and Flame. Every
other doorway along the narrow, twisting length had been rumored to
hide an opium den or a Satanic church. The colony had lived on in various
imaginations after the fire: in the 1930s Weird Tales had published the
lurid “Alastor Street” stories of Westin James, a pulp writer of the
Lovecraft coterie. There had been a Roger Corman movie and even a rock
album during the Sixties, all inspired by the legends of Alastair Street.

I walked along the rebuilt wooden sidewalks, looking into houses and
stores. Some interiors had been outfitted with displays in an attempt to
recapture the stilted past. I leaned against the four-paned window of
Courtenay’s studio and looked at the mannequin within, stiffly posed in
oil-daubed smock, palette in one hand and brush in the other. A statue
of a young female model, discreetly draped in a robe, reclined on a
nearby hassock. The exhibit was staged so that one could not glimpse
the painting on Courtenay’s easel, but the pose of the model—if not the
bland features—suggested Eros Exotica. The scene was the beginning of
his work on it, of course; good taste would have prevented the designers
of the tour from even hinting at the final stages. The choice of paintings
was appropriate. Eros Exotica had been Courtenay’s last work, finished
only a day before the Union Army had attacked. The artist had died in
the fire, and yet he was here, frozen in time by the strength of his art and
the memory of others. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath of stale air,
and thought about the black waters of Devil’s Bay, only a few miles away.

When I opened my eyes again, the model had moved.

I stared in surprise. The hassock was near the fireplace, where the red
light reflecting off crumpled foil looked vaguely like logs ablaze. The
model leaned forward and stretched, then looked toward the window. I
saw her face quite clearly, white as fresh-cut pine, with delicate bones.
Her eyes were violet. They went wide with surprise—and fear—when
she saw me. Then she stood, wrapping the robe about her, and was
quickly gone into the darkness of another room.

I heard footsteps behind me.

“Will you please keep up with the group, sir?”

The tour guide was about ten years younger than I and politely stem,
like an airline stewardess trying to convince someone to fasten a seat
belt. The group waited several pools of light down the street. I felt oddly

310 Michael Reaves

contrite. The astonishing scene I had just witnessed, and the calm
unreality of the city itself, made my transgression seem somehow more
serious than it was.

“I’m sorry.” I made a vague gesture toward the window. “There’s
someone in there.”

“Quite possibly, sir. We have people working on these exhibits all the
time.”

“No, I mean the model in the exhibit—■” I turned back toward the
window, gesturing, and stopped, speechless. The model was still there,
exactly as she had been posed before, unmistakably a construct of paint
and plaster.

The guide turned and started back toward the rest of the group. I
hesitated, then hurried forward and caught up with her. “I’m sorry—I’m
not feeling too well...”

Her expression changed immediately to one of professional concern.
This was a situation she knew how to deal with. “Of course, sir. This
way.” She took me back to the exit stairs, keeping up a solicitous
monologue. I hardly heard a word of it. The face of the model stayed
before me in the darkness of the Underground City. I knew I had seen
her before.

Darkness had fallen; the Night People, as I thought of them, were out
in force. I walked home quickly through the crowds, past street dancers
and musicians, solicitors of both sexes, and others, paying little attention
to the impromptu street parties and cheer that always filled the bright
streets after sundown. My mood was difficult to describe; I was not so
much concerned for my state of mind as I was preoccupied by the
strength of the vision I had seen. It is, I understand, common among
artists, whatever their fields, to place any shock or traumatic event safely
within the boundaries of their work. Samantha had told me once that
her first reaction, upon hearing of her husband’s death, was to think of
it as a dramatic scene in a novel or story. Actors and musicians I have
known have confessed similar urges to sublimate terrible or frightening
events in the contexts of their artistry. So it was now with me; I avoided
thinking of what had just happened in terms of losing control, and
concentrated instead upon the happening itself.

When I see something in a vivid moment of imagination—as I had
thought I had seen the woman’s face turning toward me in the studio—
then it stays with me, and I tend to see it almost everywhere I look.
Women whom I passed on my way back to my apartment, and female
faces on billboard advertisements, all seemed to take on that same pale.

The Might People 311

shocked look, that intense violet gaze. I studied the vision as I saw it in
these many manifestations, and the more I saw it, the more I was
convinced that I had seen the face before.

When I reached my room I opened/mages of Madness, a large reference
book on the works of Albright, Bosch, Munch, and others, including
Courtenay. I found the detail from Eros Exotica and stared at it for quite
some time. It was the same. The mannequin had been merely a depart¬
ment store sculpture, without even a superficial similarity to the paint¬
ing; but the image before me now was that of the woman who had looked
at me and fled the room. I had seen the luckless, nameless model
Courtenay had used over a hundred years before in his most depraved—
and most brilliant—creation.

As a child in New Delphi, I had entertained for many years the notion
that night was a magic, timeless environment, in which past, present,
and future were one and the same. Looking out from my window at the
dark street, it was easy to imagine that pirates still docked in Devil’s Bay,
or that the shouts and cries I could occasionally faintly hear were the
sounds of Union and Confederate soldiers fighting. The rising sun
thawed time again, set it flowing once more, and restored order to the
world. But at night, all times were one.

I had told Samantha once about this, hoping she would find the
childish notion as charming as I did in memory. Instead, she had asked
me how I explained the many evidences of the continued functioning of
time after sundown, such as clocks ticking off the minutes until dawn. I
had countered by asking how someone who wrote childrens’ fantasies
could be so literal-minded, and it had built from there into yet another
fight.

And yet I was right, in an ironic sense. For I left her at night, at that
time when she was most alive, and now she is suspended, frozen, no less
than my childhood friends or Justin Courtenay himself.

I had chosen oil as my medium. Acrylic and watercolor dry too fast,
and none of the other methods I had used in the past—etching, lithog¬
raphy, charcoal—seemed appropriate. I had started with the most som¬
ber shades and built up from them, trying to evoke the image from the
darkness.

It had been hard, at first, keeping the room properly lit. As the sun
moved across the sky, it was necessary to change the easel’s position
accordingly. The best time, I found, was twilight; in that brief stillness
after sunset and before darkness, subtle shadings and interplays were

312 Michael Reaves

most visible to me. On occasion I would have to alter what I had done
earlier. It was frustrating.

My hand would cramp from holding the palette, and the old coveralls
I had bought at the Salvation Army crackled with dried paint. I wished
I could continue working after dark, but the harsh artificial light de¬
stroyed all subtlety and delicacy. It was ironic: having finally become a
night person I was now engaged in a project that could not be pursued
after dark. Samantha would have laughed.

Though she had considered herself an intellectual and was quite well
read, Samantha had known very little about art. What few concepts she
had picked up she tended to state dogmatically, as if intensity made up
for information. One of these was the tenet that an artist’s visions grew
more powerful as the artist slipped gradually into insanity. She would
cite van Gogh’s progression of self-portraits as an example. “The trouble
with your art,” she would tell me, “is that you’re too sane. You need to
set free your dark side.” I was never sure how serious she was. At the
time the critique had infuriated me; now I considered it perhaps the only
thing worth salvaging from our relationship.

I had been working steadily on my painting since my return to New
Delphi, but now, after my visit to the Underground City, I had stopped.
My vision, so clear these past few weeks, had been obscured; Courtenay’s
model had come between me and the canvas.

For several days I tried to paint around it, to recall the memory I was
trying to set down. It had not been that long ago, after all. But it was no
use; I was no longer sure which face I saw. Courtenay’s style and subject
had been my inspiration this time, and now it was working against me.
I had brought with me no photographs, no sketches; I had to rely on the
purity of vision. I was feeling the pressure of time; I knew I could not
count on being undisturbed for too much longer. At night I felt no time
pass; I experienced only a calm, Zenlike now. But I could not paint at
night. And the sun moved the days relentlessly.

I knew what I had to do. I had to return to the Underground City and
somehow—I had no plan—learn who or what it was I had seen. Only by
doing that would I be able to end my preoccupation, to see past her face
and view the face in my painting clearly again.

I thought of waiting until nightfall to take advantage of whatever
subtle magic the darkness might bring. But that was not necessary; it was
always night in the Underground. I bought another ticket and descended
the steps once more. It was easy to slip away from the group once we
had reached Alastair Street, to hide in the darkness of a recessed doorway

The Might People 313

until they were gone. Then I made my way down the narrow Parisian
street to Courtenay’s studio.

The mannequin of Courtenay still stood before his easel, studying the
model’s casual pose. I stared at the still life for what seemed an age,
waiting for one or both of them to move. Nothing happened. I pressed
the heels of my hands against my eyes until bright green lights swirled
in darkness. What was I doing? I was far too old to be chasing phantoms;
I had been an artist far too long to justify blaming my failure to create
on so absurd a concept as ghosts. I had to seek what reasons there were
for my inability within that small apartment on Evangeline Street, not
here in a city of the dead.

I opened my eyes—and saw that the model was gone.

The door was secured with an anachronistic padlock and hasp. I had
to break the window with my shoe and carefully pick the shards of glass
from the frame before I could vault into the studio. I was sure my action
would bring a security guard or some other official, but there was no
sound. In fact, I realized when I stopped to listen that the silence was
perfect; I could no longer hear the faint voices of the tour group in the
distance.

The model of Justin Courtenay stood calmly before me. This close, I
could see that it was not a particularly inspired or maintained reproduc¬
tion; the plaster tips of his fingers were chipped, and his eyes were the
wrong color. I stepped around the easel to look at the canvas, and was
not surprised to find it blank.

Oddly enough, I felt no worry over my forced entry, even though I
knew what repercussions discovery could bring. Such concerns seemed
remote, unreal, belonging to another age. I stepped through the far door
the model had used for escape the previous time.

I don’t know what I expected to find; what I found was a room filled
with dusty boxes, crates, and stacks of partially dismembered nude
mannequins. On the floor before me was a rumpled piece of white fabric
with dark stains. The only light filtered dimly from the street. A rear door,
barely visible, was partially open. Beyond it lay blackness.

It was at this point that I finally became afraid.

There was no hint of light beyond the door—and yet I knew, somehow,
what was waiting in the darkness. I picked up the robe on the floor before
me; the robe that the model had been wearing. It was still warm; the
dark stains streaking it were still wet.

I looked at the door again. If she waited out there, it would not be as
a plaster mannequin, nor as the frightened model I had seen in my

314 Michael Reaves

previous glimpse of this past. It would be as Courtenay had painted her,
in his last, most powerful vision.

My mouth was dry. I could smell the cloying scent of pigments and
oils—and something darker. I dropped the robe, turned and stepped
quickly back into the studio.

The statue of Justin Courtenay was gone. The studio was empty, save
for the furniture and the easel. No fire, real or simulated, burned in the
fireplace. The painting upon the easel was Eros Exotica; the fresh
pigments gleamed in the flickering light from the street gas lamps. I knew
that if I touched it, it would be as wet as the bloodstains on the robe.

I stared at it, fascinated. It is one thing to view a reproduction of such
a work, quite another to witness the vibrant original. Though I was
familiar with every line, every nuance of it, still I stood, paralyzed with
horror and admiration, at the genius of Courtenay’s work. He had shown
the same skill with the knife as with his brush. What in lesser hands
would have been mere psychopathic barbarism had here been elevated
to art—a sculpture of living flesh.

I tore my gaze from it and looked toward the window. It was unbroken.
Through it I could see lights in other windows, and, above the buildings,
a sky filled with stars as mad as van Gogh’s.

The Night People walked the street.

I could see them quite clearly—women in bustled silk dresses, men
with muttonchops and canes. These were the real Night People, I knew,
the ones upon whom Courtenay had based his famous work. They
sauntered casually through the evening air of Alastair Street, nodding
and tipping hats to each other. I recognized the dark, brooding face of
Edgar Allan Poe as he stopped to speak to a gentleman who could be
none other than Ambrose Bierce. This was impossible, of course—Poe
had died of debauchery while Bierce was still a child. I watched Sara
Eaton, her skin as white as the marble she sculpted, strolling proudly
with her lover, the ballerina Anastasia Cyril. From an upstairs window a
whore leaned, her bare breasts polished by the gaslight, and waved at
prospective customers. Egan Mamauk and Miguel Gaspar, Goya’s only
disciple, stumbled drunkenly across the street in pursuit of a girl barely
in her teens. They had no more been contemporaries on Alastair Street,
I knew, than had Bierce and Poe. I saw other artists, famous and
infamous, some acquaintances of those about them, others separated by
years or decades. But all walked Alastair Street this night.

There was no sound; even the carriages and horses on the cobblestones
were silent. And then I heard a noise behind me.

I turned and saw her emerging from the night beyond the second floor.

The Might People 315

her face still in darkness, the blood running like shadows over her body.
I heard again the drops hitting the floor. She took another step, and her
face became visible. When I saw it, I screamed.

I ran from the studio into the midst of the Night People. Though they
were all about me, I collided with none of them, and they took no notice
of me at all. I broke through them and ran. Alastair Street stretched
before me, endless, serpentine ...

“Set free your dark side,” she told me, more than once. Our quarrels,
as I have said, had been dry and intellectual for the most part—at first.
But we both had gradually descended into that gulf between us, accusing
each other of darker things, things worse than infidelity and uncaring,
worse even than disparaging each other’s talent. For at the bottom of
that gulf lay madness—the ultimate artistic goal. And we had come to
suspect each other of it; and from there, to encourage it.

I don’t know how long it took me to reach the steps that rose to the
surface streets. At one point I heard shouting behind me, glimpsed one
of the Underground City’s security personnel running after me. Perhaps
they had seen me break the glass. I did not stop running.

It was night, of course, when I emerged. In Xavier Square the crowds
were thick and varied: teenagers with spiked hair and tattooed cheeks;
gays in leather, handcuffs locked on their belts; brightly-colored prosti¬
tutes. Their pervasive decadence seemed nothing, somehow, when I
compared them with the sedate strollers I had seen. And yet they were
the same; as I stumbled home, it seemed I could glimpse among the
crowds gentlemen in ascots and bowlers, and ladies veiled in lace. It was
the same endless night I had seen on Alastair Street—the same night in
which I had left Samantha.

I had succeeded in my purpose, at least, though not in the way I had
intended. The face that had emerged from the shadows in the studio had
not been that of Courtenay’s model. Instead, I had seen what I needed
to see to finish.

When I reached my studio, I did not turn on the lights. I opened the
curtains, letting moonlight flood in. They say that not even the light of
a full moon is enough to discern colors by, yet even so, the pigments
were more vivid to me than ever before. I tore the canvas I had worked
on so long from the board, and stapled a new one to the stretcher bars.
Each shade and color seemed almost luminous as I set to work.

Since this night was the same as all nights, then it would also be the
night in which they found me. But I knew that this would not happen
until the last stroke was laid. And I was right; it was not until I laid the
brush down that I heard the knock on the door, the gruff identification.

316 Michael Reaves

I took down Courtenay’s prints; they had served their purpose. I did
not answer the knock. The landlady let them in at last and turned on the
light. I had to shut my eyes against its glare, and so was unable to see
their reaction. I could hear their gasps, of horror and disgust, however;
could hear the landlady turn and run from the room. It was only then
that the relief, the release, which I had been seeking for so long flooded •
over me. An artist’s work is incomplete, after all, until it is experienced
by others.

I smiled at them. “I call it Samantha in the Night," I said.

Ceremony

William F. Nolan

William F. Nolan has written some 45 books, 90 short stories, numer¬
ous teleplays and screenplays, and something like a thousand essays,
articles and reviews. Despite all this, Nolan is best known to science fiction
and fantasy fans as the co-author (with George Clayton Johnson) of
Logan’s Run. Perhaps this is because Nolan’s far-ranging enthusiasms
have spread his output over too many genres. For example, his most recent
output: a book on Max Brand, a book on hard-boiled detective fiction
(The Black Mask Boys.), a collection of horror stories (Things Beyond
Midnight), and an NBC Movie-of-the-Week about Jack the Ripper (Bridge
Across Time). -

Born March 6,1928 in Kansas City, Nolan has lived in the Los Angeles
area since 1953, where he has written full-time since 1956. His first
science fiction book, a collection of stories entitled Impact 20, was
published in 1963. He is author or editor of several other books in this
genre, as well as the compiler of the annotated bibliography, The Ray
Bradbury Companion. His stories have appeared in more than 120
anthologies, but this is his first appearance in The Year’s Best Horror
Stories. “Ceremony” was inspired by a forced bus ride to Providence,
Rhode Island where he attended a World Fantasy Convention. Nolan feels
that it is his best story: “For me, it is the end product of thirty years of
pro fiction.” Have a look.

He hated riding cross-country in a bus almost as much as he hated driving
cross-country, but the problem was he’d missed his rail connection
getting into Chicago and just couldn’t wait for the next train. He had to
be in Providence by Thursday evening to meet the Sutter woman. So it
was the bus or nothing.

Mrs. Sutter was leaving that same night for Europe, and when she
returned she expected her husband to be dead. The contract had to be
settled before she left and the advance paid him. He didn’t ice rich,
unfaithful husbands unless he was well paid for the job, half down, the

317

318 William F. Nolan

other half after the hit. Funny part of this one, he would have done old
Sutter for free. Because of the total. He’d dispatched 13 people (would
joke sometimes about “working as a dispatcher”) since he’d gone into
this business and he needed to break the total.

It wasn’t that he was superstitious. Never had been. But, in plain, hard
truth, that damned number 13 was unlucky for him. No question about
it. He was 13 the time his father had split out for good, when they were
living in that crummy, red-brick, coldwater flat in St. Louis. Not that he
loved his old man. Not that bum. It was just that his father was usually
able to keep his mother from beating the crap out of him. She beat him
senseless twice that week, after the old man had split. Took it out on
him. Way she took everything out on him. Always had. He was missing
three teeth because of her. Good ole Mom.

That was the same week he ran off to Kansas City and got a job as a
stacker in a paper-box factory after lying about his age. He’d looked a lot
older than 13.

Then there was a double-13 on the license plate of that big, pink
Lincoln convertible the blonde had driven when he’d hitched into Boul¬
der City a few winters back. The blonde had been fun, sure, but she was
coked out of her gourd when she flipped the car on a hairpin turn in the
mountains and almost killed both of them. She thought it was funny,
having a double-13 on her plates. Yeah, funny.

And, in Nam, there was a transport number, 13-something, painted
on the tail of that lousy chopper that went down in the rice paddy. He’d
been sent back to the States after that, with a Purple Heart, but the crash
had killed his best buddy—the one real friend he’d ever trusted. He didn’t
trust people as a general rule. People screwed you up when you trust
them. But he’d trusted Eddie ...

There had been a lot of 13s in his life, all tied into hard times, bad
breaks, heavy losses. And now, by Christ, his job total was 13. Bad luck.
But Mr. Sutter would make it fourteen and everything would be okay
again. Life was fine, so long as he stayed away from the 13s.

“The bus will get you into Providence by late Thursday afternoon,” the
train clerk had assured him in Chicago. “But it’s a long trip. Rather
exhausting. We’d suggest a flight.”

“I don’t take planes,” he told the clerk. He didn’t tell him why.

It wasn’t the chopper crash in Nam. Not that. It was the dream. About
a commercial airliner, a big 747. Falling, with him strapped inside,
staring out the window. Going down fast, people screaming, a jet engine
on fire with the right wing burning. Paint cracking and peeling in the

Ceremony 319

fierce heat, with the flames eating at a number on the trailing edge of
the wing. A number ending in 13.

The one job he’d had trouble with, killing Wendl, that banker in
Tucson, when a piss-ass schoolkid had seen him come out of Wendl’s
house after the job and called the cops, that one had been the 13th. He
originally planned it for the fourteenth, but when he found out Wendl’s
family was returning from their trip a day early, he was forced to make
the hit. But never again. No more jobs on the 13th, no matter how much
he got paid. He’d learned a lesson there, in Arizona. Cops had almost
nailed him for sure.

So now he was on a bus in late October, heading for Providence, Rhode
Island, ready to eliminate Mr. James T. Sutter at the personal request of
his loving wife, Jennifer. He’d get the advance from Mrs. S. and spend a
week in Providence, then ice the old fart before taking a train back to
the Coast.

Bringing his job total to fourteen.

He grinned, closing his eyes ...

. .. and woke with a jolt, feeling cold glass strike his forehead. He’d
nodded off, lulled by the rocking motion of the bus, and his head had
bumped the window. He straightened, coughing, and wiped a small
trickle of saliva from his chin. That’s how it was on a long bus ride, with
those fat tires hypnotically thrumming on the road, setting up a measured
vibration in your body, making you drowsy. Your eyelids get heavy, slide
down; your mouth gapes, and you doze. And wake. And blink. And doze
again.

Time is meaningless. You don’t know where you are, what town you’re
passing through. Don’t care. Your back aches, and your feet are swollen
inside your shoes. Your clothes itch, tight and sweaty around you. You
smoke, but the cigarettes taste sour.

Hours of travel along strange highways, suspended in a surreal
vacuum between night cities and day cities, looking blankly out at hills
and rivers and passing traffic, chewing on stale Clark bars from paint-
chipped vending machines in musty-smelling depots. Riding endlessly
through country you’d never seen and never wanted to see.

It was early afternoon on Highway 95. Sun half down along a rolling
horizon of green hills. They’d just crossed the state line from Connecticut.
He’d seen the big sign with a girl’s smiling face painted on it...

WELCOME TO RHODE ISLAND!

A Nice Place Visit.

A NICER Place to Live.

320 William F. Nolan

He suddenly remembered a song he’d heard when he was very young.
His old man had this classic recording of the Andrews Sisters—Patty,
Laveme and somebody—singing energetically about “poor little Rhode
Island, smallest of the forty-eight...” There had been only forty-eight
states when the Andrews Sisters had made the record, and he remem¬
bered feeling sorry for the place. He’d been a little kid, shorter than most
of his schoolmates, and he identified with smallness. One summer he’d
found an abandoned pup, a real little guy, obviously the runt of the litter,
and had taken it home. But his mother strangled it. She didn’t like pets.

Poor little Rhode Island ...

They were passing through farm country in the western part of the
state. Lots of big rocks, with dirt-and-gravel roads branching off into
fields (what were they growing?—he sure as hell didn’t know) and with
pale white Colonial farmhouses off in the distance. He spotted some
apple orchards, and there were plenty of elm and oak trees along the
road, all fire-colored. Like passing a circus. He wasn’t much for scenery,
but this was special—New England in October, putting on a class show
for the customers.

How many hours had it been since they’d left Chicago? Twenty, at a
guess. At least that long. It seemed like weeks, riding these endless gray
highways.

The bus was nearly empty. Just him in the back section and an elderly
couple up front. It had been crowded at first—but people kept getting
off. More at each depot stop. Finally, it was just the three of them and
the driver. Well, nobody in his right mind rode a bus for twenty hours.
But it was almost over. Not long now into Providence.

He closed his eyes again, let the singing tires take him into sleep.

He woke to darkness. Thick black Rhode Island night outside the glass,
an interior dark inside the bus. He’d been jarred awake by rough road
under the wheels. Narrow and bumpy. Why had they left the main
highway? Jesus! He’d been due into Providence before dark.

He got up numbly, bracing himself against the seat back, then walked
forward unsteadily along the aisle past the elderly couple (godawful
bony-looking people) until he reached the driver.

“Where are we?” he asked, squinting into the night. “Why aren’t we

on 95?”

The driver was a thin character, with gaunt, stretched skin. He stared

Ceremony 321

intently ahead at the narrow road, illuminated in floury-white patches
by the probing lights. “Sorry, buddy, I had no choice.”

“What’s that mean? How late are we going to be getting into Provi¬
dence?”

“Won’t be there till morning,” said the driver. “You’ll have to spend
tonight at the Mill. We’ll be coming in soon. Maybe another ten minutes.”

“The hell you say!” He leaned over to grip the driver’s thin shoulder.
“Turn this thing around and get us back on the main highway! I’m due
in Providence tonight, and by God you’d better get me there!”

“No can do, buddy. Engine’s fouled up. Overheating real bad. Maybe
the carburetor, dunno. Only place to get ’er fixed is at Doour’s Mill. They
got a garage there. You ask me, lucky we made it this far. Gotta admit it
sure beats being stuck someplace out on the road.”

“Is there a phone at the garage?”

“Oh, sure. You can call from the Mill. No problem.”

He started back toward the rear of the bus, thinking it’s 13 again. That’s
why this job has gone sour. He checked his watch. Damn! Won’t do any
good to call Providence *iow. She’s gone. Off to sunny Italy. Figured it
for a chicken job; figured I didn’t want the contract. She’ll hire it out
later, after she gets back.

Unlucky.

Okay, he told himself, ease down. You can score another contract in
New York. Just have to put off going back to the Coast for a while. Plenty
of action in New York. He had some good contacts there. He’d make it
fourteen in New York. Just relax. What’s done is done. Don’t fight it.

“Happy Holiday!” said the couple, one after the other, both saying it
to him as he passed them on the way to his seat.

He paused, gripping an upper handrail as the bus shuddered over a
deep cut in the gravel road. “Uh, yeah ... same to you.”

When he reached his seat in the SMOKING PERMITTED section, he
slumped down heavily, got out his cigarettes. Dead pack. He tossed it
away, dug out a fresh one. He lit a Salem, drew in smoke, sighed, settled
back into the cushion.

He’d forgotten; tonight was Halloween! This was it, all right, October
31st. As a kid, it had been his favorite holiday.

He never got presents for Christmas, or for his birthday, and Easter
was a drag. But Halloween was nothing but great—the one night in the
year when people gave you things. Free candy. .. cake ... apples .. .
doughnuts...

He smiled, remembering.

The bus lurched to a creaking stop. Doors hissed open.

322 William f. Nolan

They were at the garage, a weathered building with light seeping from
its fogged windows. A dented Ford pickup was parked in front with the
words HARLEY’S REPAIR SERVICE painted on the side.

“All out, folks! Doour’s Mill.”

He stepped down onto the gravel roadway. The driver was helping the
elderly couple from the bus. They moved slowly, cautiously, their bones
like breakable china. That’s how you get if you stick around long enough,
he thought.

The garage owner, Harley, began talking to the driver. Very tall, in
baggy trousers and a tom denim work jacket. Then the driver came
around to open the luggage door on the bus.

He reached in for his travel bag. Light, compact, good leather. Had it
custom-made to fit his needs. With a hidden compartment for the
short-barrel .357 Magnum. Sweet piece of equipment. He’d started with
a Browning .380 automatic, but he’d never trusted it. The Mag he trusted.
Always got the job done. Easy to carry, with a real kick to it.

“You wanna use the phone, one’s right inside.”

“No, it’s too late now. Forget it. There a cafe around here?”

“Straight ahead. Two blocks up. If it’s open.”

“Thanks.” He checked his watch. Nine-thirty. “What time do we leave
in the morning?”

“Be here by six,” said the driver. “She’ll be ready to roll by then.”

“Okay.”

He passed the dim-lit garage. In the smoked gloom, standing next to
a high-piled stack of discarded truck tires, a lean, unshaven mechanic in
greased blood-dark coveralls stared out at him.

He continued along the street. The gravel gave way to concrete, but
the ground was still uneven. Tufted grass spiked up from wide cracks in
the surface. The ancient Victorian houses along the street were in equal
disrepair, their gabled bay windows cracked and shadowed. Porches
sagged. Roofs seemed hunched against the night. Doour’s Mill had gone
to seed, a time-worn New England relic of a town that seemed totally
deserted.

It wasn’t. A pair of teenagers, holding hands, came toward him, heads
together, talking quietly. They looked underfed. The girl had no figure
at all. “Happy Holiday,” they said to him as they passed.

He didn’t answer them. No point in it. Terrific town for a holiday.

He had no trouble finding the cafe. It was the only building along the
main street with a neon sign. MA’S PLACE. Reminded him of his mother.
He didn’t like that. When he got closer, he saw that the first two letters
had burned out. It was ALMA’S PLACE. Several other letters in the sign

Ceremony 323

were dying, slowly dimming, flickering and buzzing in the air above his
head like trapped insects.

He opened the door, stepped inside.

He was the only customer.

The waitress behind the worn linoleum counter was obviously young,
but she looked like an anorexic. Pasty skin. Long, bony face with watery
brown eyes. She blinked at him. “Hi, mister.”

He said hello, asked if she was serving hot food.

“Sure, till ten o’clock we do. I mean, no steaks or specials this late, but
I can fix you some eggs.”

“Okay, that’ll do. Scrambled easy, with hash browns and wheat toast.”

“Easy it is,” she said, and walked back to the kitchen to fix his order.

He sat down on one of the counter stools, laid his travel bag over
another, and glanced idly around. A few greenish-colored tables, some
crooked wooden chairs, an old broken-faced jukebox in one comer. Dark,
not working. Near the antique cash register somebody had tacked a paper
plate to the wall. On it, scrawled in black crayon: HAPPY HOLLO WEEN!

He chuckled. They can’t even spell Halloween in this godforsaken
town.

The waitress ambled out of the kitchen with eggs and toast. “Sorry,
no more hash brown,” she said. “But I can give you some sliced tomatoes.
As a substitute, no extra charge. Not too fresh, though.”

“This’ll be all right,” he told her. “With coffee.”

She nodded, pouring him a cup. “It’s kinda strong. You use cream?”

“No.”

“Well, it’s kinda strong.”

“It’ll be fine,” he said, spooning sugar into the cup.

“I hope the toast is okay. I tried not to bum it.”

“It’s fine,” he said.

He began to eat. One thing you can order safely in a joint like this, he
told himself, is eggs and toast. Hard to screw up eggs and toast. These
were all right.

He sipped the coffee. Ugh! Bitter. Damn bitter. He spooned in more
sugar. Helped some, but not much.

“I toldja it was strong,” the girl said.

He didn’t say anything.

“Guess you wonder, this being Alma’s Place, who’s Alma, huh?”

“Hadn’t thought about it.”

“Alma was my mother.”

“Was?”

“She died. Little over a month ago. Just didn’t last till the Holiday.”

324 William F. Nolan

He looked up. “You mean—until Halloween?”

“Right. She just didn’t last.”

“Sorry.”

“Well, we all gotta go sometime. Nobody lives forever, right? It’s like
the Indians used to say—about how when it’s your time an’ all.”

He spread butter on his toast. Itwas burned. “Guess you don’t get much
business around here.”

“Not much. Not anymore. Used to be the cotton mill was open. They
named this town after it, Doour’s Mill. Owned by Mr. Jonathan Doour.”

“What happened to him?”

“He died and it closed down. All the mill folk moved away. We got
only a real few left in the town now. Real few.”

“Why do you stay?”

“I own the place is why.” She shrugged, picking at a shred of loose
skin on her lower lip. “Mama wanted me to keep it going. Besides—” and
for the first time she smiled—“people gotta eat!”

“I didn’t see any other lights along the street,” he said. “Are you the
only one open at night?”

“Mr. Exetor’s drugstore stays open. Half a block down.” She pointed.
“He’s open to ten, like here.”

“Good. I could use some cigarettes.”

“He’s a widowman, Mr. Exetor is. Wife passed on end of the summer.
Just wasted away.”

He finished eating, pushed his plate back.

“More coffee?”

“I’ll pass. Too strong for me.”

“Yeah, like I said, it’s kinda strong.” She looked at him with intense,
shadowed dark eyes. “You’re invited to the Ceremony.”

“What?”

“You’re invited. We have it each Holiday. On October 31st, each year.
And you’re invited.”

“I don’t go to church,” he said. “But thanks anyhow.” He got out his
wallet. “How much do I owe you?”

“That’ll be seventy-five cents,” she said.

“Here’s a buck. Keep the change.”

“Thanks, mister.” She rang up his order on the ancient cash register.
“Ceremony’s not in church. Fact is, we don’t have a church here anymore.
I mean, we have one, but it’s boarded up. They broke all the windows.”

“I see.” He picked up his travel bag, moved to the door.

“Happy Holiday,” said the girl.

“Same to you,” he said, and walked out.

Ceremony 325

It was raining now. A thin misting foggy rain. The street glistened like
black leather under the pale light cast by the cafe’s overhead neon.

He turned up the collar of his coat and walked to the drugstore. No
sign outside, but the window said EXETOR’S, in chipped gilt. He walked

in, and a tiny bell tinkled over the door.

Exetor was round-shouldered, cadaverous, with a bald head and long,
big-knuckled hand. A thick vein pulsed, wormlike, in his mottled neck.
Looked as if he’d be joining his wife soon. Well, in a town like this, it
didn’t matter much whether you were alive or dead. The old man had
been fiddling with a box of pipe cleaners and now he put the box down.

“Might I help you, sir?”

“Salem Hundreds. Two packs.”

Exetor walked behind a dust-filmed tobacco counter and got the
cigarettes. “You from the bus?”

“That’s right.”

“I saw it come in.”

“Our driver had some engine trouble. We were due in Providence. Is

there a hotel in town?”

“Certainly,” said Exetor, accepting payment for the cigarettes and
ringing up the sale. “The Blackthorn. Just down the way. Right at the
intersection. You walk left. Big three-story building on the comer. Can’t
miss it.”

“I sure never expected to be staying here tonight.”

“No problem getting a room at the Blackthorn. Not many folks around
anymore. Expect they’ll be closing one of these days. Like me. Just not
enough business to keep any of us going.”

He nodded. “I can see that.”

Exetor smiled thinly. “Sad. About this town, I mean. So much history
here. Have you heard of Roger Williams?”

“Can’t say I have.”

“Strong-minded man, he was. They banned him from Massachusetts
for religious nonconformity. But that didn’t stop him. He established the
first settlement in Providence, in 1636. Remarkable man.” Exetor’s voice
grew more intense. “Jonathan Doour was related to Williams. Had an oil
painting of him hanging on the wall of his office at the mill. So this town’s
part of history, you see. All of it, tied together—going back to 1636.”

“Gives you something to hang on to, I guess.” The old guy was a real
bore. Who gives a damn about some religious nut from the 1600s? Maybe
that’s what the Ceremony was all about—honoring his memory or some
such crap.

326 William F. Nolan

“Each year, more of us pass on,” said Exetor. “Just don’t make it to the
Holiday.”

“You people seem to think a lot of Halloween.”

“Oh, yes, indeed we do.” Exetor nodded, the neck vein pulsing. “It’s
very important to us here at the Mill. We have our Ceremony at this time
each year.”

“So I’ve been told. I’m not much for ceremonies.”

Exetor clucked his tongue against yellowed teeth. “It’s the only day I
really look forward to anymore,” he said, his voice soft with regret. “My
wife and I always attended together. I’ll be alone this year.”

“Oh, yes—I heard about your wife. That’s tough.” He edged toward
the door. This old geezer planned to talk all night.

“It’s most difficult, getting on without Ettie.”

He was almost to the door when a wall sign caught his eye.

HAPPY ALL HOLLOWS EVE

Again, misspelled. Should be All Hallows. Didn’t anybody ever go to
school in this burg?

He reached the door, opened it. The bell tinkled.

“You are invited to the Ceremony,” said Exetor.

“No thanks.” He started out—and heard Exetor say: “Attendance is
not voluntary.”

He left the drugstore. Now what the hell did that mean? He looked
back through the cracked plate-glass window at the old guy. Exetor was
standing there, staring out at him, not moving.

Weirdo. Him and that chick at the cafe. Both of them, weirdos.

It was still raining. He shifted the weight of his travel bag from right
to left hand and began to walk in the direction of the Blackthorn. He was
feeling kind of lousy. Stomach upset. Headache. Maybe it was the long
bus ride and his missing the Sutter contract. He’d be fine once he’d moved
up his total to fourteen.

Right now, he just needed a good night’s sacktime. He checked his
watch. Getting toward ten. Exetor and the cafe girl would be closing up,
probably heading for their Ceremony. Fine. Just so they were quiet about
it. No loud music or dancing. He grinned, thinking what ole Exetor would
look like hopping around the floor. Exetor, the Dancing Skeleton!

He heard something behind him—the low-purring sound of a car’s
motor in the misting rain.

Cop’s car. Sheriff. And with a deputy in the seat next to him. The car
glided slowly alongside, stopped. Jeeze, he hated cops. All cops.

Ceremony 327

“Evening,” said the sheriff.

“Evening,” he said.

The lawman was gaunt and sharp-featured. So was his deputy. And
both solemn. No smiles. But then, cops don’t smile much.

“Just inta town, are you?”

They damn well knew he was—but they liked playing their cop games.

“I came in earlier with the bus. They’re fixing it. We had a breakdown.”

“Uh huh,” said the sheriff. “Harley, over to the garage, he told me
about the trouble.”

A pause—as they stared at him from the car’s shadowed interior. The
motor throbbed softly, like a beating heart in the wet darkness.

Finally, the sheriff asked: “You staying at the hotel?”

“I plan to. Guess they’ve got plenty of room.”

The sheriff chuckled wetly, a bubbling sound. “That they have, mister.”
Another pause. Then: “Mind if we look over your suitcase?”

He stiffened. The Mag .357! But unless they tore the travel bag to
pieces, they wouldn’t find it.

The sheriff remained behind the wheel as his deputy got out, knelt in
the wet street to open the bag.

“Gonna ruin your pants, Dave,” said the sheriff.

“They’ll dry,” said the deputy, sifting through the contents, patting
down shirts, fingering coats.

He tried to look normal, but he was sweating. The hidden gun
compartment was just under the deputy’s right hand. If he ...

“Thanks, mister,” said the deputy, snapping the bag closed. “Never can
tell what folks’ll carry.”

“Guess not.”

The deputy got back in the car, leaned out from the rolled-down
window. His voice was reedy. “Happy Holiday,” he said.

The car rolled forward, gradually losing definition in the misting
darkness.

The hotel was no surprise. Meaning it looked crappy. Sagging. Falling
apart. Paint-blistered. Wood missing from the upper porch steps.

Well, it’s like my sweet mother used to say, beggars can’t be choosers.

He walked up the steps, avoiding the broken areas, and entered the
lobby through a loose-hinged, leaded-glass door. The lobby was bare,
dusty, deserted.

A clerk dozed behind the wall counter. Another skinny character.
Middle-aged scarecrow in a rumpled suit. His nose was long, thin, almost
transparent.

328 William F. Molart

“I’ll need a room.”

The clerk’s head jerked up like a stringed puppet. He blinked, reached
for a pair of thick-lensed glasses, put them on. Pale blue eyes swam

behind the lenses. “Cost you five dollars.”

“I think I can handle that.”

“Sign here. Name and address.” The clerk pushed a card across the
grimed counter.

He signed it, using a phony name and address. Never tell anybody the
truth about yourself. He’d learned that in Kansas City. And a lot of other
places.

He gave the clerk a five-dollar bill. And got a key.

“Guess I’m not the first here tonight,” he said.

“Don’t get you, mister.”

“There was an elderly couple on the bus with me, coming in. They
must have registered earlier.”

“Nope.” The clerk shook his head. “You’re our first in ’bout a week.

Nobody else tonight.”

Strange. Where would they go?

“Yours is on three. Use the elevator. Stairs are rotted out. Sidney will

take you up. If he’s sleepin’, just give him a poke. Room 3-H.”

He nodded, moved across the wide, vacant lobby with his travel bag
to the elevator. Its metal-pleated door was open. Inside, draped over a
high wooden stool like a discarded bundle of dirty clothes, was a
stick-thin old man. His patchy hair was streaked gray-white over his long
skull.

“You got a customer, Pop.”

The deep-socket eyes opened slowly. He stared at the stranger out of
large milky pupils. “What floor?”

“The top. Three.”

He stepped into the cage and felt it give perceptibly under his weight.
“This thing safe?”

“Weren’t, I wouldn’t be in it,” said the old man.

The pitted grill-door slid closed and the old man pushed down a
corroded wall lever. His wrist was ropy, spotted with sores. The ancient
cage creaked rustily into upward motion.

The old man’s odor was strong, almost fetid. “Staying the night, are
you?

“I’m not here for the floor show.”

He was getting sick of dealing with these weirdos. Nothing to gain by
continuing to answer their stupid questions. He was amused by the fact

Ceremony 329

that a sleazy hotel like this actually employed an elevator operator. No
wonder the old croak slept on the job; nothing the hell ebe to do.

“We were the first state to declare independence from the Mother
Country. You know that?”

He grunted.

“May the 4th, 1776, it was. We declared two months ahead of all the
other colonies! Little Rhody was first, yes sir. First to declare.”

“Were you there, Pop?”

The old man chuckled like dry leaves scraping. “Not hardly. But I’ve
been around a spell. Seen things happen. Seen a lotta people die. But I
made it again this year. Made it to the Holiday.”

Another Halloween Freak.

They reached the top, and the black door folded back into itself like
an iron spider.

He stepped out. The cage rattled downward as he walked toward 3-H.
The hall reeked of mold and decay. Rug was damp, lumped. Ceiling was
peeling away in thick, hanging folds, like strips of dead meat. He could
hear the steady drip-drip-drip of rain coming in through the holes in the
roof. Jeez, what a pit!

He reached the hallway’s end. The door on 3-H startled him. It was a
lot fancier than the others, ornamented in an intricately carved rose
design. The knob was scrolled brass. He keyed the door open and swore
softly. They’d given him the bridal suite! Well, why not? Nobody was
about to pick the Blackthorn in Doour’s Mill for a honeymoon!

It wasn’t a suite, actually. Just one big chamber, with a bathroom off
to the side. The bed, centered in the room, was enormous. Talk about
your antiques! The tall gilt headboard was decorated with plaster angels.
The gold paint had dimmed, and most of the angels had cracked wings,
but he had to admit that the effect was still damned impressive.

A big faded-pink dresser loomed against one wall. Two velvet-black
chairs, seedy but elegant, stood beside a huge cut-velvet couch fitted with
rose-carved brass studs. A large mirror dominated the wall above them,
framed in faded gold.

He walked over to it, looked at himself. Needed a shave. Coat and shirt
wrinkled, damp from the rain. Looked like his old man. A bum.

The bathroom was full of badly chipped tile and rusted brass fittings.
But at least there was a shower. He hadn’t counted on one. Real bonus
in a fleapit like this.

He opened his bag, took out the travel clock, set it for five-thirty. That
would give him plenty of time to get dressed and down to the garage by
six, when the bus was ready to leave. He’d be glad to shake this freak

330 William F. Nolan

town. Gave him the creeps. After Doour’s Mill, New York would be Paris
in the spring!

Damn! No inside chain lock. Just the regular knob lock. Well, that was
okay. He always slept with the .357 under his pillow. Best protection in
the world.

He had expected that the hot shower would make him feel better, but
it hadn’t. He still felt lousy, really kind of hung over. Dog tired. And
sickish. Had to be the food at Alma’s. Those eggs were probably half-
spoiled. And that rat-piss coffee—that stuff would kill Frankenstein!

He slid his loaded Magnum under the pillow and put on a pair of white
silk pajamas. The bed was great. Deep and soft, not at all lumpy or damp.
And the sheets were crisp, freshly ironed. Not so bad after all.

It wasn’t much after ten. He’d get a full night’s rest. God, but he was
beat. He stretched out on the big mattress, closed his eyes—and was
instantly asleep.

He awoke slowly. Not to the clock alarm. To a low murmur of voices.
Here. In the room with him.

“It’s wearing off.” Man’s voice. Old.

“He’s coming round.” Woman’s. Also old.

His eyes opened. He blinked, trying to get a clear focus on the dim
figures in the room. The only light came from the bathroom and the door
was partially shut. Things were murky.

There were several of them, surrounding the bed in a rustling circle.

“Welcome to the Ceremony,” said the bus driver.

It was him, all right, and no mistake. Before he could fully register the
shock of this, another voice said: “Happy Holiday!”

Focus. On the source of this second voice. It was Harley, the garage
owner. His greasy mechanic stood next to him.

Now, rapidly, he ran his gaze over all of them: the elderly couple from
the bus ... Exetor .. . Alma’s daughter ... the lobby clerk ... the old
elevator man ... the two skinny teenagers ... Even the sheriff and his
bony-faced deputy were here. Everybody he’d seen in the whole damn
town—all here, around his bed, smiling down at him. And all of them
thin, gaunt, wasted-looking.

He counted. There must be... Oh, Christ, yes, there were 13 of them!

A long iced wave of absolute fear engulfed him, and he closed his eyes
to shut out the horrific ring of skulled faces.

“As I pointed out earlier this evening,” said Exetor, “your attendance
at the Ceremony was not voluntary. It was required."

Ceremony 331

“Yes, indeedy,” agreed the hotel clerk, peering down at him with
swimming fish eyes. “You’re our Guest of Honor.”

He tried to speak but could not; the words were choked bile in his
throat.

“Can’t give our Ceremony without a Guest of Honor,” said the elevator
man.

The elderly couple were holding hands. The woman spoke slowly,
distinctly. “Henry and I weren’t at all sure we’d last till the Hollow Day.
Not at all sure.”

“Each year at this time we gather to be replenished,” said Exetor,
“thanks to our Guest of Honor. Believe me, sir, we appreciate what you
are giving us.”

“I can have my baby now!” said the teenaged girl excitedly. The boy
put his arm around her narrow waist. He kissed her gently on the cheek.
Beside them, the garage owner’s eyes shone with pride.

“Ain’t many new babies bom to Mill folk anymore,” he said. “We
cherish our young, we surely do. Laurie here—she’ll have the strength
to bear, thanks to you.”^

“That’s right,” the bus driver said. “I tell ya, buddy, we’re deeply
grateful!”

“I’m sure sorry that coffee I served you was so dam bitter,” said Alma’s
daughter. “But the stuff I had to use in it tastes plain awful. Still, it’s very
restful. Keeps you from hurting when we’re getting you ready.”

He was fully awake now, and anger flushed through him. Under his
pillow. The loaded .357 Magnum. He’d blow them away, every damned
freakish one of them!

But he couldn’t reach the gun. He suddenly became aware that his
wrists were strapped to the sides of the bed, as were his ankles. And there
was another wide leather strap across his chest, holding him down.

And ... oh, God ... there were the snakes!

Thirteen of them!

No, not snakes, they were ... some kind of rubbery tubes. Coiling out
from his body into the figures surrounding him, a tube for each of them,
attached to his flesh and ending in their flesh—like obscene umbilical
cords.

Jesus—they were feeder tubes!

“Ettie so wanted to be here,” said Exetor softly. “It would have meant
more months of life for her. But she just couldn’t last to the Ceremony.”

The sheriff patted the old man’s arm in sympathy. “Ettie was a mighty
fine woman.”

He strained desperately against the straps, but they held firm.

332 William F. Nolan

“No use pushin’ like that,” said the mechanic in the rotted dark
coveralls. “You ain’t goin’ nowhere. Sheriff Morland fixed them straps
personal. They’re good and tight.”

He felt himself weakening now. Moment by moment, his strength was
being bled away—into them. As he grew weaker, they grew stronger.
Their eyes were brighter; their cheeks began to acquire a glow.

The waitress tipped back her head, closed her eyes. “Ummmmm, sure
feels good!”

“Nothing will be wasted. I assure you,” Exetor said. “We useeverything.
Even the marrow.”

“Bone marrow’s good for the teeth,” said the teenaged boy. “And we
need healthy teeth for our baby.”

“Tell us your name and we’ll call it after you,” said the teenaged girl.
“As a gesture, you might say.”

“He won’t tell,” said the hotel clerk. “Gene Johnson was on the card,
but I bet you ten dollars that name’s a fake.” He blinked downward. “Will
you tell us your real name, mister?”

He gasped out the words: “You ... can ... all... go ... to hell!”

They looked at one another. The bony deputy shook his head. “Well
now, we sure hope the good Lord don’t see fit to send us down there.
We’re all decent folk, here at the Mill. Always have been.”

The figures in the rustling circle nodded agreement.

Things were dimming in the room. He blinked, feeling weak as a
newborn cat. The anger was gone. The fear was gone. He was tired. Very,
very tired. It was like being on the bus again, with the thrumming wheels
making him drowsy. His eyelids were heavy. He wanted to close them.
Did.

Darkness now.

And rest.

No more worry.

No more pain.

Everything was fine.

*

The Woman In Black

Dennis Etchison

Dennis Etchison is another of that small group of first-rank horror
writers who have only with the recent upsurge of interest in horror fiction
begun to receive the critical recognition they have quietly earned over the
years. Born in Stockton, California on March 30, 1943, Etchison now
lives in Los Angeles, where he teaches creative writing at U.C.L.A. An avid
film fan, Etchison claims to know more movie trivia than David J. Schow.
In spring of1985 he was a staff writer for the HBO series, The Hitchhiker.
Scream/Press has published two excellent collections ofEtchison’s short
fiction —The Dark Country and Red Dreams— and a third is forthcom¬
ing. A novel, Darkside, was a summer release from Berkley Books. As
editor, the versatile Etchison also has a series of reprint anthologies due
from Tor Books, Masters of Darkness, as well as an anthology of original
fiction from Doubleday, The Cutting Edge. Other books include novel-
izations of the horror films, The Fog, Halloween II, Halloween III, and
Videodrome (the last three under the pseudonym Jack Martin).

When they took his mother away he went to live in the big house.

There he discovered rooms within rooms, drapes like thick shrouds, a
kitchen stove big enough to crawl into, overstuffed furniture that
changed shape as he passed, a table with claw feet larger than his head,
ancient carpets with designs too worn to read, floor heating grates that
clanged when he walked on them, musty closets opening on blackness,
shadowed hallways that had no end.

These things did not frighten him.

For soon he made friends with the boy across the street; his aunts and
uncles came by to help with the meals; it was summer and the back yard
stayed light forever.

Before long, however, after only a few days and nights, he found that
he could think of but one thing: of the lot next door, beyond the fence,
of the high wall that kept him from its bright and dark treasures.

333

334 Dennis Etchison

He was in the grove behind the arbor, about to pluck a fig from a
low-hanging branch, when someone opened the front gate.

The fig hung there among pale jigsaw leaves, swinging to and fro like
a black teardrop. He looked over his shoulder, through luminous bunches
of grapes clinging to the lattice. The air was still. At the end of the arbor
a plum dropped from a tree, splitting its skin as it landed and spattering
the grass below with glistening juice. A piece of heavy iron groaned on
the other side of the fence, the same sound he heard at night when the
blue lights began to flicker; he was thankful it was day time now so that
he could try to ignore it.

He turned his head in time to see his uncle striding toward him along
the path, grinding fallen grapes into green stains on the gravel. The boy
breathed again and returned his attention to the translucent leaves and
the pendulous fruit swaying there.

“Hi, Uncle Ted.”

“Willy.” His uncle came up next to him and stood squinting sadly at
the untended yard, at the scraggly weeds poking their way under the
fence. “Have you talked to Grandma today?”

“When I got up. I made my own breakfast. I went into her room for a
while. Then I went over to Vem’s to play.” He closed his fingers around
the fig and pulled; the soft tissue bent and snapped and a milky drop of
sap oozed out of the stem.

Uncle Ted shifted his weight and studied his shoes. “Do you like it,
living here?”

“I like it fine. Uncle Ted, the Fair’s coming to town next week. Vern
says they have different rides this year. New animals, too. We’re saving
our money. Can I go?”

“We’ll see, Willy, we’ll see.”

A breeze passed by, rustling the leaves. The tall iron that showed above
the security fence groaned again but did not really move; that was only
a tree throwing its shadow against the rusty bolts. On the next block a
dog barked; Grandma’s chickens clucked suspiciously in response. Wil¬
liam peeled the fig and opened it like a flower in his hand. It was sweet
and the tiny seeds popped in his teeth like soft sand.

“I know you miss your mother, Willy.”

“Sure.” He sucked at the fleshy pulp until his tongue tingled, smearing
his face, and wiped his mouth with his sleeve. He discarded the skin and
glanced up. Uncle Ted was waiting for something. What was William
supposed to say? “Is she coming home today?”

“We all miss her. Very much.”

“Tomorrow?”

The Woman In Black 335

“I’m afraid not.”

0 *

“Saturday? Maybe Aunt Emily and Aunt Grace could come over and
we could make a special dinner for her. I can wash the dishes, and
afterwards—”

Uncle Ted cleared his throat. He twisted his fingers together behind
his back and pointed his chin at the sky and took a deep breath so that
his chest puffed out, his tan shirt taut. He was looking toward the top of
the iron crane towering above the fence, but that was not what he was
thinking about. It must have been something a long way off, higher and
farther than William could see.

“No,” said Uncle Ted.

“Oh.”

The man sighed. He unclenched his hands and ran them nervously
over his head. William remembered the way his uncle had looked after
his last tour of duty, his close-cropped hair and the sharp creases in his
shirt. Since he got back he wore looser clothes and did not stand so
rigidly, but his hair was still short and brushed slick.

Now Uncle Ted stood straight again, locking his knees till he was as
tall as he could make himself. William almost expected him to salute.

“You haven’t been trying to climb over the fence, have you?”

“No, Uncle Ted. Only—”

“Only what?” The man squinted again, and this time his brow fur¬
rowed with anger. He began opening and closing his eyes very rapidly.
He set his jaw and glared down at the boy.

“N-nothing,” said William.

“You got something to say, boy, say it!”

“Well—” What was his uncle so upset about? William was sure it could
be nothing he had done. “Well, sometimes I wish I could see what’s on
the other side. Do you know what’s over there. Uncle Ted?”

“Nothing for a child to worry about. It’s private property and don’t you
forget it. From the fence down to the river it all belongs to the govern¬
ment. Only thing for a little boy to do over there is slip and fall and get
hurt, get himself into a whole lot of trouble. But we’d better be glad it’s
there. And proud! We’d better be!”

“I believe you. Uncle Ted. I never tried to climb over. I wouldn’t even
go near it. I know I’m not supposed to—to—”

His voice broke and his eyes watered so that the branches wavered
and his uncle’s legs buckled as if they were made of jelly. He felt an ache
in his chest and a numbness in his lips and cheeks; suddenly the air
around him was unseasonably cold, a warning of some impending
change in the weather. A hurting welled up in him that went far beyond

336 Dennis Etchison

this argument which was no argument at all and which seemed to make
no sense.

A strong arm encircled his shoulders.

He opened his eyes wide. What he had seen a moment ago was true:
now his uncle stood less tall, slumped as if the wind had been knocked
out of him, his shoulders rounded under an oppressive weight. The man
removed his arm self-consciously, put his hands together until his nails
were white, and cracked his knuckles. The sound was painfully loud in
the stillness, like bones breaking.

“I know, Willy,” said his uncle, “I know.” His eyes glazed with that
same faraway look. He pinched his nose and massaged the furrow from
his brow. William noted that the man’s hand was shaking. “I’ll take care
of everything. From now on. We’ll keep you safe and strong. We can do
it. I know we can. Anything you need, you ask Aunt Emily or me and
we’ll do our best to ... ”

William said, “I think I’d like to visit my mother, if she’s not coming
home Saturday. I’d like to go soon. If that’s all right.”

The man shook his head, a decisive twitch. “They wouldn’t let you in.
Not even that. They never would.”

William swallowed and cleared his head, trying to shake off the bad
feeling. “Well,” he said, “when are they going to let my mother out of the
hospital?”

“When?” said Uncle Ted absently. “Wh...” And here his voice failed
him for the first time. William wanted to do something to help him, to
thump him on the back the way he did when Grandma got to coughing,
but he could not reach that far. “I’m afraid,” said the man, “that your
mother’s never coming back to Greenworth. You understand, don’t you
boy? Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

The moment was frozen in time. William wanted badly to break and
run. His eyes darted around the yard, desperate to find a way out, a secret
passage, a doorway in the fence that he had not noticed before.

His uncle held him by the back of the neck. But it wasn’t necessary.
He couldn’t run now.

For there, behind the screen of the back porch, half-hidden but visible
in dark outline, was the figure of a woman. She was dressed in a flowing
black garment. William could not make out her features, not even her
eyes, but he knew that she was watching him as he stood in the garden.

He sat with his grandmother, rubbing the circulation back into her
wrists, as the day came to an end.

“Oh, you must go darling,” she was saying. “Don’t be afraid. There will
be so many interesting things to see!”

The Woman In Black 337

“I don’t want to,” said William.

He knew his grandmother always let him have his way, even when it
was not what was best for him, and he loved her for that. But now he
had had a change of heart about going to the Fair and she would not
understand. Had she turned against him at last?

It was as if she refused to acknowledge what had happened. She sat
propped up in bed, looking out her bedroom window as usual, an
expression of serene acceptance on her face. Didn’t she notice that the
back yard would soon be overgrown with stalky weeds like the ones near
the fence? My Grandma’s getting old, he realized, and then tried to force
that thought from his mind.

She smiled and took his wrist in both of her hands. “I understand how
you feel. It’s only natural. But no one is ever quite ready for anything
when it comes along. Besides, who knows what wonders you’ll find
waiting for you when you get there? It’s not far at all.”

She clasped his hands coolly and gazed outside again. A thin, blue
twilight was rapidly descending, and already angular shadows had
grown over the henhouse next to the fence, shading the tops of the
machinery on the other side until the riveted joints and streaked I-beams
became the jutting turrets of an iron fortress.

“Like what?” asked William without curiosity.

It would be no fun this time. How could it be? He had more important
things to think about now, things he did not even know if he could make
himself consider; things he felt certain he could not begin to understand.
The Fair was too late this year, he knew, and his heart sank. From now
on it would always be too late.

His grandmother drifted away from him, lost in the gray convolutions
of the bed that marked the limits of her world now. Her eyelids closed
halfway and her pupils thickened.

“Such wonders!” she said, her voice intense but growing fainter, her
chest fluttering from the effort. “I’ve dreamed of them. Wings soft as
clouds, doves with faces dearer than a baby’s, all God’s creatures come
together at last... oh, darling, it will be so beautiful!”

“They have all that?” How could she know? The big trucks hadn’t even
crossed the city limits yet, he was sure. Only Vem seemed to know ahead
of time, and that was because of his cousin who worked on the carnival
crew. “Are you sure?”

“As sure as I’ve ever been of anything.”

“Well,” he said, “I still don’t think I want to go.”

“And why not?”

“I—it’d be too lonely.”

338 Dennis Etchison

“But you won’t be alone!”

“Yes, I will,” he said. He thought of Vem and the way his friend would
behave around him now, cautious and polite, afraid to say the wrong
things, so careful that they would have no fun at all. He remembered the
way it was the day his father did not come home from the power plant,
and for weeks after—the way everyone left him alone at school and did
not ask him to play, as though he were fragile and might break if they
came too close. Vem would walk apart from him all the way to the
Fairgrounds, offering William too much of his candy and waiting for him
to decide what they would do next, ride after ride, the whole time. It was
more than he could bear. He would feel different, special, and that would
only make the day longer and sadder.

“Oh, darling, I wish I could go with you! Perhaps I shall,” she added,
patting his hand again. “One can never be sure ...”

Of course he knew she didn’t mean it. She couldn’t.

“I wish my daddy could go with me,” he whispered.

She beamed. “He’s already there.”

“What?”

Her eyes grew strange. “Don’t you know that, child? You must try to

believe. It will be so much easier for you.”

William felt a knot in his stomach. Suddenly.he was no longer sure of
anything. He wondered if he and his grandmother were even talking
about the same thing.

“What else do they have?” he said too loudly, testing her. “Do they
have—” He groped for a word. “Do they have gorillas? From Africa?”

“They do.”

“And elephants?” That was a good one. He knew the Fair was too small

to have elephants.

‘That, too.”

He thought of the dream last week, after he had heard the groaning
sound louder than ever from deep within the enclosure. “Do they have
birds with wings you can see through?”

“Yes.”

“And—and a talking pig? Do they have a pit that talks. Grandma? Do
they really?”

“I’m sure of it. Anything the mind can imagine, and more.”

He sat forward, making fists. “No, they don’t. It’s only a Fair, Grandma.

A Fair!”

“What a lovely way of putting it. The Animal Fair! And all just there,
on the other side. So close, and getting closer all the time. Soon there

The Woman In Black 339

will be no barrier at all. The birds and the beasts . . . anything and
everything, oh, yes!”

Anything? he thought. If they have everything, do they have mothers there?

He stood up in the close bedroom, his arms stiff at his sides, and stared
defiantly at the old woman. But she only continued to peer out at the
back yard as if it were a vision of the Promised Land, at the sea of weeds
overrunning the grounds, the trees and vines that had grown gnarled
and misshapen as her hands, the fruit that seemed to be illuminated by
a cold light from within if you looked too closely in the night. Her eyes
were filmed over; she could no longer see what had become of her home.
Either that or she saw and embraced it all, and that possibility frightened
him more than anything else.

“Don’t you understand, Grandma? Don’t you see? We—we’ve got to
get away from here!”

Even after daddy got sick they had stayed because of his work, and
then when it was too late his mother refused to leave out of some kind
of loyalty to his memory, and because her brothers lived here, because
Greenworth was her home. But now in a blinding flash he knew that they
were wrong. Their faith was a stubbornness that was killing them all.

“I want to leave. Grandma. Let’s move away. I can go to another school.
We can sell this house and—”

“And go where? Another house, another street, it’s all the same. Child,
it’s everywhere...”

“Someplace else, then! If we go far enough away you’ll get well
and—and—”

Grandma’s shoulders moved; she was laughing or crying, he couldn’t
tell which. “Don’t you see, Willy? It’s too late to run. This is the way it is
now. For all of us. No use fighting it. It’s growing up all around. The only
answer left is to cross over ...” Her weeping chuckle became a cough.

William moved reflexively to thump her between the shoulder blades
and end the spasm. But this time he could not bring himself to strike her
for fear that her frail body might not withstand the impact of his small
hand. He touched the flannel of her nightgown and felt how unnaturally
cool it was, saw the wan flesh of her neck above the ruffled collar. He
yanked his hand away. His fingers were tingling. He looked at his palm.
It was ashen, bloodless. Like her skin. Does it rub off, Grandma? he
wondered in a panic. Does it?

He sprang away from the bed, bolted from the bedroom and ran out
of the house without looking back.

She’s dead, she’s really dead. It hit him full force as he fled down the

340 Dennis Etchison

steps and into the garden. The stone path snaked out behind him, its tail
eaten by the darkness gathering under the porch. Before him lay the
remains of the back yard, a landscape that now seemed filled with
skeletal trees and vines reaching impatiently toward the face of the rising
moon. My mother’s dead. He tore down the path, a chill piercing his heart.
Branches like bony fingers tried to snare his arms. He zigzagged and
caromed off a tree trunk, dislodging the last of the dark, testicular fruit
drooping and shriveling there. She’s dead and she’s never coming back not
ever!

He hurried by the chicken coop, seeing the bobbing necks of the hens
and roosters as they gawked with alarm at his passing. Their wings
spread and beat out a flurry of feathers that were like snowflakes on the
air. He could not escape their agate eyes. He paused long enough to open
the pen and calm their squeaking. They assembled between his legs,
covering his own ankles with their plumage.

“Shh,” he told them, “it’s all right, we’re all all right,” and did not
believe it.

They observed him indifferently, the few remaining feathers on their
scrawny bodies settling back into place.

His eyes filled with tears.

As he knelt one small chicken, his favorite, flew onto his knee. He
stroked its piebald head and kissed its beak. The others tiptoed away to
scratch at the hard dirt, and as the flock parted he saw a shape on the
ground by the water trough.

It was the oldest and plumpest of the hens, lying on one side with her
claws curled inward. Her feathers rippled and lifted.

He rose to a crouch and crept closer. He wondered how long she had
been dead. It couldn’t have been very long, but already an army of ants
had established a supply trail in and out of the open mouth, where the
tongue protruded like a pink arrow.

He extended his arm to touch her, and immediately snatched his hand
away as if she were hot. Damp feathers fell aside. The wrinkled skin was
teeming with maggots, busily transforming the carcass into something
he did not want to see.

He gagged and hid his face.

Who would take care of her chicks now? He reached behind the perch
and found her nest. This time there were no peeps, no tiny pecks at his
fingers. That was good. She had left no little ones behind. He felt the
polished roundness of an egg. Gently he lifted it out.

The egg was smooth as porcelain but oddly soft. And cold. He cupped
it gingerly in his hand and raised it to the dying light.

The Woman In Black 341

The shell was full-sized but not all of it had hardened properly. Part
of the surface was nearly transparent, little more than a stretched
membrane. He looked closer. Barely covered by the thin cellular wall
was a distorted, malformed embryo. It was unlike any chick he had ever
seen before, an error of nature mutated in vitro. Its congealed, elongated
eye stared back at him through a delicate lace of veins.

William shuddered. Crying silently, he replaced the egg in the nest
and covered it with straw. There, he thought,you won’t have anything to
worry about now. Maybe it’s better this way, after all.

A cold wind blew through the trees. It whistled in from the front yard,
catching and keening in the eaves of the house. Did something move
there, just inside the screen porch? No, it couldn’t be. Grandma never
got out of bed anymore. If anyone else were inside there would be a light
showing somewhere.

Could it be —?

No. There was nothing, nothing. He told himself that. He dug his nails
into his hands until his palms bled. What a baby you are. You’re afraid
of—of— .

There was a wailing sound. It blew in on the wind from the other side
of the house.

He heard a commotion then, the dull clicking of heels on the sidewalk,
and a scream. Somewhere a door slammed. The screaming did not stop.

He latched the chicken coop and hurried to the street.

At first nothing seemed out of place. The view from his gate was of
the same houses, the roofs sagging under a dingy sky, the treetops jagged
silhouettes against the horizon, their distended roots raising the pave¬
ment in uneven waves. There were the sunken boundary lines of cracked
cement between the yards, only the reinforced security fence that began
next door still tall and straight, porchlamps like the first stars of evening
vibrating with oversized insects, Vem’s house across the street leaking
spikes of yellow light.

But wait. There was movement in the bushes by Vern’s porch, a
shaking out and a separating and then the stab of legs in the dimness.

Vem’s mother was already at the comer, huddled under a streetlamp
with her face in her hands. The shape of her body blended with the
shadows so that she might have stood there for hours before William
noticed her. But now Vem’s older brother was running to bring her back
to the house as the short bursts of screaming started again, tight and
muffled by her knuckles.

William stepped off the curb.

The wailing at the end of the block became louder, rising and falling

342 Dennis Etchison

like a buzz saw, as a long car cut across the intersection and sped up the
middle of the street. William jumped out of the way and saw that it was
one of the dark military vehicles from the plant, like the one that had
come to take his mother.

ECNALUBMA, it said across the front.

It dipped and braked and three men in uniforms hopped down and
raced to Vem’s porch, a blur of equipment under their arms. The screen
door flapped open. A moment later they reemerged carrying a litter,
unfolded to support a bulky form. They were no longer in a hurry, and
the sheet was drawn up all the way.

The screen door flapped again and Vem’s family followed, heads low,
their feet scraping the rough cement. There was Vem’s sister Nan, two
of the cousins from the next block, and Vem himself, so much shorter
than the others. William looked for the stocky contour of Vem’s father,
the broad shoulders and thick waist, but no one like that came out except
for the chunky mound under the sheet.

William called out and waved until Vem spotted him. His friend didn’t
wave back. His head was down between his shoulders and he was
marching forward as though underwater.

Vem did not watch the men loading the gurney into the back of the
van. The cousins waited solemnly a while longer, then went to help bring
Vem’s mother back. She did not want to come. Her screams became a
whimpering. When Vem did not move, William started across the street.

‘Vem? Hey, Vem! What happened? Are you all right?”

One more figure came out of the house. William did not know who
she could be. By some trick of light and shade the door did not appear
to swing open for her, and yet there she was, following Vem like a tall
shadow. She glided down the walkway behind him, a breeze filling her
draped black veil.

William stopped.

Vem finally raised his eyes, saw William, and his face relaxed slightly.
But he did not come forward.

The woman drifted ahead, her flowing garment enfolding Vem and
then passing him as though he were not there. She floated away from
them all and into the street, heading for the house where William now
lived. The wispy black material covered her completely, almost wrapping
her legs and feet as it trailed out behind her, and yet she did not hesitate
at the broken curb. As the veil blew against her face William thought he
saw something familiar in the shape of her features, but he could not be
sure. He turned to watch her cross the humped blacktop and alight on
the other sidewalk.

The Woman In Black 343

Vem said something at last, but his words were lost on the wind.

The woman approached Grandma’s house, only to bypass it in favor
of the fenced-in area that began next door, not even slowing as she
neared the high locked gate. Her face was still hidden by the veil, but
William was sure that she was looking at him.

“No!”

Was Vem watching her, too? William looked back and saw his friend
waving wildly, his arms raised in a railroader’s highsign.

“No, Willy! Don’t go in there ... stay here! Don’t...!”

It was too late. He had to know.

When William turned again she was already through the gate. The
edge of her veil slipped through the metal links and disappeared inside
the compound.

Drawn by a feeling he could not name, William ignored the ambulance
as it pulled slowly away, its siren now silenced, and followed the woman
in black.

The entrance was heavily chained and padlocked, as if no one had
gone in or out for a very long time. He could not slip through or under.
He could scale the fence and the wall behind it if he used the links in the
gate for toeholds, but the barbed wire at the top would be a problem. He
disregarded the old warning signs posted around the perimeter, hooked
his fingers into the ragged metal, and started climbing.

The barbs were sharp but he squeezed his eyes shut on the pain, rolled
over the top as quickly as possible, and dropped down on the other side.

It wasn’t very far at all.

The sounds of life in the street, the tinkling wind that blew across the
town, the lights going out in the rest of the world were all distractions
cut off from him now. The deepening darkness was inviting, a cushion
that broke his fall and called him to enter it at last.

Where had she gone?

There was no path for him to follow. As his eyes adjusted he made out
the struts and crossbeams of an old support scaffolding, the flaking treads
of an abandoned earthmoving tractor, the corroded shell of an amphib¬
ious tank, a hydraulic scoop, the segments of a conveyor belt, a teetering
stack of old tires shot through with twiggy, hybrid weeds. Somewhere
behind the tires a flickering like cold fire shone between collapsed
sidewalls.

He got up from his hands and knees and made his way through the
debris.

He passed a junked truck and came out into a small clearing. The moon

344 Dennis Etchison

was high above bowed tiers of rotting lumber, but it was a different light
that beckoned him now.

He paused to get his bearings. The wall to his right might have been
the fence along his grandmother’s yard, but how could he be sure?
Serpentine foliage pressed up to the boards in an ever-expanding tide;
soon the last property lines would disappear, swallowed by the un¬
checked growth. He padded on, placing one foot carefully in front of the
other as unseen life forms scurried out of his way, large insects or small
animals, rats, perhaps, or something like them.

He brushed a dented panel, releasing a shiver of rust and dirt that fell
around him like heavy rain. It was the cab of an outsized reconnaissance
vehicle, apparently designed to maneuver over rough terrain. The steel
door creaked on its hinges and sent a reverberation through the rest of
the machinery.

He covered his head. The driver’s seat was empty; the giant shift and
brake levers were locked at odd angles, like the seized-up hands of a
primitive timing device. He imagined that the vehicle might yet be
capable of moving, inching forward to lead an assault under cover of
darkness and establish a beachhead in occupied territory. That would
explain the groaning he heard, loudest in the dead of night when
everyone else was asleep, as though iron and steel were drawing relent¬
lessly closer to the flimsy, unguarded barrier.

The rain of rust stopped. A last echo rang out. In the distant riverbed
a population of bullfrogs resumed their fitful chorus. He tried to set a
course from their singing but it was no use. There were no landmarks in
this place, no way to know that he would not end up where he started.
Fear gripped him as a new sound began, a steady rhythm like the
pounding of surf on a far shore. It was the beating of his own heart in
his ears.

Help me, he thought, please! Somebody —

A shadow like the dark, gauzy hem of a long dress skipped over the
blade of a forklift, backlighted for an instant by a soft flickering the color
of static electricity, and vanished behind the gutted chassis.

Without hesitation he moved toward it.

There was a narrow passageway between piles of ancient brake drums
and hubcaps. He pulled in his elbows and pushed through, and came out
into the blue light.

At first it was like the pale glow of the phosphorescent stars he had
pasted to his bedroom ceiling, only larger and brighter and spread out
in a wide band like the Milky Way. Then he focused and saw a loose
barricade of old canisters. They were taller and broader than oil drums

The Woman In Black 345

and were marked with the same stenciled symbol he had seen on the
signs outside, a circle divided into six wedges like a cut-up drawing of a
pie. One of them had tumbled onto its side and probably leaked, because
the lid was ajar and a heavy inner lining of chipped glass showed where
the top had been. Directly in front of it the ground was bare and scorched,
but behind the containers a tangle of skinny plants had taken root, and
it was these that shimmered with a faint but unmistakable radiance.

On the ground before him, leading up to the cylinders and disappear¬
ing into the spray of shrubbery behind, was a series of elongated spots
like ghostly footprints.

His placed his sneaker into one of them. The imprint was short and
narrow but it fit him perfectly.

William started walking again.

His legs shook tall weeds, and a shower of pollenlike metallic dust
settled on his skin. He looked at his hands, transfixed by their sparkling,
and his toe thudded into one of the drums.

A few feet away, hidden only by the vegetation, there was an explosion
of hysterical squealing and then a great thrashing, as if someone had
taken a wrong step and plunged headlong into the darkness.

He swept the weeds aside.

There, sprawled on one side, was an enormous animal. It reminded
him of the sows he had seen at the Fair in years past, and yet it was not
one of their kind. It was much too large for any pen to hold, its snout
thicker than his thigh, its huge underside rising and falling with peaceful
regularity. It was black as coal from head to tail except for the immense
belly, where now several smaller animals wriggled to regain position.
Their fat shapes were stretched with translucent skin, their veins and
capillaries aglow with a cold, unearthly light. Tiny silken hairs moved on
their restless bodies, which were already pigmented in places with black
spots that would soon toughen into a hide able to contain their new
forms.

Does it talk? he wondered. Does it, really?

Awestruck, he stood and watched her suckling her hungry offspring.
Then, stumbling desperately, he lunged forward into the glowing circle
and flung himself at her teats, his hands feverishly pawing the air as he
fought to gain a place there for himself.